Porn Valley Dispatch

With budgets being what they are (we're talking porn budgets, not GawkerMedia budgets), there are very few "non-sex" roles in today's porn films. So chances are that if you appear in an adult movie, you're having sex in it. It stands to reason, then, that my first non-sex role in a porn film was very, very special. Mind the gap.- G. Ponante

******

As America's only porn journalist, I am often called to weigh in on matters that are, well, weighty. Furthermore, my studied opinion is considered with great brow-furrowing in the warehouses and plywood-stiffened offices of power that dot Porn Valley.

So when I complained in a review that an editing nuance in Digital Playground's Jack's Playground 25 had depicted actress Melanie Jagger as a pig (to wit: a title appeared reading "Here comes the pig") I was outraged and said so in my review, about which Pauline Kael returned from the grave to not remark upon.

The 27th installment of Jack's Playground is to be released in early November (Digital Playground releases one every fifteen minutes to coincide with the 381 bus in Van Nuys) and I was asked to perform in it as a disgruntled reviewer. Because I was to play myself, no fee was mentioned.

I thought long and hard about what appearing in a porn film (even if it was only shot on HD) might do to my political career.

"I'll do it only if you don't call me a pig or otherwise try to embarrass me in post-production," I said, and was assured that this would absolutely not happen.

So I showed up, met director Robbie D ("I will make you a star"), signed my 2257 documentation proving that I was (just) over 18, and proceeded to smash a computer monitor with a baseball bat, ala Office Space.

There were no blowjobs for Gram that day. I was not even blowjob-adjacent. But I was happy to contribute to America's greatest export: Freedom.

Previously: Porn Valley Dispatch Archive