um hi
Text from the LA Times:
On a recent Saturday night, Savannah Stern
earned $300 to hang out for seven hours at a party in Santa Monica wearing nothing but a feather boa.
The veteran of more than 350 hard-core pornography productions took the job to earn extra cash and to network. But the word at the 35th anniversary party for Hustler magazine was not heartening, especially among the roughly 75 other women working there.
“At least five girls I haven’t seen in a while came up to me and said, ‘Savannah, are you working?’ ” said Stern, who started in the industry four years ago and, like most adult performers, uses a stage name. “I had to say, ‘No, not really,’ and they all said, ‘Yeah, I’m not either.’ “
The adult entertainment business, centered in the San Fernando Valley, has weathered several recessions since it took off with the advent of home video in the 1980s. But this time the industry is not dealing with just a weakened economy. A growing abundance of free content on the Internet is undercutting consumers’ willingness to pay for porn, and with it the ability of many workers to earn a living in the business.
For Stern, 23, the rapid decline of job opportunities in the porn business over the last year has been dramatic. She has gone from working four or five days a week to one and now has employers pressuring her to do male-female sex scenes for $700, a 30% discount from the $1,000 fee that used to be the industry standard.
Less than two years ago, Stern earned close to $150,000 annually, sometimes turned down work and drove a Mercedes-Benz CLK 350. Now she’s aggressively reaching out for jobs and making closer to $50,000 a year.
As for that Mercedes? She’s replacing it with a used Chevy Trailblazer — from her parents.
“The opportunities in this industry really are disappearing,” Stern said. “It’s extremely stressful.”
Industry insiders estimate that since 2007, revenue for most adult production and distribution companies has declined 30% to 50% and the number of new films made has fallen sharply.
“We’ve gone through recessions before, but we’ve never been hit from every side like this,” said Mark Spiegler, head of the Spiegler Girls talent agency, who has worked in porn since 1995.
“It’s the free stuff that’s killing us, and that’s not going away,” said Dion Jurasso, owner of porn production company Combat Zone, which has seen its business fall about 50% in the last three years.
Porn is hardly the only segment of the media industry struggling with these issues. But its problems appear to be more severe. Whereas online piracy has forced big changes in the music industry and is starting to affect movies and television, it has upended adult entertainment.
At least five of the 100 top websites in the U.S. are portals for free pornography, referred to in the industry as “tube sites,” according to Internet traffic ranking service Alexa .com. Some of their content is amateur work uploaded by users and some is acquired from cheap back catalogs, but much of it is pirated.
Sites like Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube attract more users than TMZ and the Huffington Post. The porn sites are even bigger than Pirate Bay, the top portal for illegal downloads of movies, TV shows and music.
Frustratingly for porn producers and distributors in the Valley, none of these sites appears to be making much money. Suzann Knudsen, a marketing director for PornoTube, said the site’s parent, Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network, uses it to attract customers for paid video on demand.
“PornoTube isn’t a piggy bank,” she said. “Its true value is in traffic.”
The adult entertainment business, which was previously in the vanguard of home video, satellite and cable television and digital distribution, now finds itself leading the rest of the entertainment industry in losses from them.
“The death of the DVD business has been more accelerated in the adult business than mainstream,” said Bill Asher, co-chairman of adult industry giant Vivid Entertainment, who estimates that his company’s revenue is down more than 20% this year.
“We always said that once the Internet took off, we’d be OK,” he added. “It never crossed our minds that we’d be competing with people who just give it away for free.”
There are plenty of other signs of the porn industry’s pain. Attendance at the Adult Entertainment Expo, an annual trade show in Las Vegas that’s open some days to the public, was down 20% this year. Pay-per-view programming, a key revenue source for the industry, has fallen about 50% from its peak three or four years ago, according to a person familiar with the cable and satellite TV business.
Reliable revenue and employment figures for the adult industry don’t exist, since no analysts or economists track it. Adult Video News estimated in 2006 that it was worth $13 billion, but Paul Fishbein, editor of the trade publication, said the number was “an educated guess.”
“Almost all of the companies in our industry are privately held, and they keep the cards close to their chests,” said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, an industry trade group.
From the archives: See No Evil Stage musical on L.A. porn industry is…The effects of the downturn have been felt most severely by the thousands of people who work in the adult entertainment business.
Kelly Labanco doesn’t need industry estimates to know what’s happening. The makeup artist, who has worked in porn for five years, is landing half as many jobs as she did a year ago and has seen her pay drop from a high of $250 an hour to less than $100.
“A lot of companies say they don’t even need makeup artists now and the girls can do it themselves,” said Labanco, who has returned to her previous job doing freelance music publicity to pay the bills.
Even the industry’s biggest events aren’t worth what they used to be for working people like Labanco. Last year, she and a friend did makeup for a week at the Adult Entertainment Expo and earned $8,000. This year: $1,200.
Caroline Pierce,
an adult film performer who lives in Las Vegas but flies to Los Angeles for work, said many companies have pressured her to do more scenes for less money.
“Instead of paying you $800 to do one, they’ll pay you $1,200 for both,” she explained.
As economic pressures increase, many performers have also changed their minds about what they are willing do on-screen. Previously, women earned hefty bonuses for unusual sex scenes. That’s often no longer the case.
“A few years ago the girls we got were OK, but not stellar models, and we were sometimes paying $2,500,” said porn director Matt Morningwood, referring to a website he shoots for that features one woman and multiple male partners.
“Nowadays some of the top-tier models will do that scene for us and you’re looking at maybe $1,800. I’m happy for the production, but I feel bad for exploiting the girls’ situation.”
The only growth market most executives see is mobile devices, since they let consumers watch porn anywhere and in relative privacy.
Major companies that serve as a gateway to content on cellphones in the U.S. such as Verizon don’t allow explicit adult content. But like cable and satellite companies in the 1990s, they may change their minds when they see the potential profit.
“Anyone betting against porn being a meaningful driver of traffic and revenue on mobile networks would be making a bad choice based on history,” said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research.
Adult performers with big followings probably will continue to prosper, since they often work under a guaranteed contract and have loyal fans who buy all their work. Business managers for Belladonna
and Tera Patrick,
two of the industry’s biggest stars, said their clients were using their celebrity to make money in other ways, like dancing in exotic clubs and licensing their name to sex toys and lingerie.
“The economy has forced us to look in other directions such as tangible goods,” said Evan Seinfeld, who co-manages Patrick, his wife, and runs her production company, Teravision.
But for the “middle class” of the industry, those opportunities don’t exist.
“It seems at this point that if you haven’t established a well-known name, it’s really hard to keep working,” performer Alexa Jordan
said.
Savannah Stern is adjusting to that reality. She’s shooting scenes for her own subscription website and planning a tour of exotic dance clubs to earn money from her name while she can. After that, she hopes to go to college for an interior design degree and work in her family’s real estate development and contracting business.
“I wish I would have never gotten into it,” Stern said of her career in porn. “When you get used to a certain lifestyle, it’s really hard to cut back and realize this may not be forever.”
Scene from brie MILF:
********************************************
um hi
Recently, someone contacted me thinking I was the girl with the glasses in the amazingly sublime video “Crayon Kids” starring Annie Anklets and the mysterious girl with the glasses. Annie really captured something special in this video:
for more information on “Crayon Kids,” contact Annie Anklets — no deadbeats please!
Also, I would really like to hear from the mysterious girl with the glasses. Please contact me!
Previously,
Bought my first computer back in 99. Almost immediately I noticed some fantastic pictures of Annie Anklets wearing poodle skirts, petticoats, bobby socks, and saddle shoes. So, I sent “her” an email mentioning that I like to wear poodle skirts too, and Annie said “show me!” This required that I bought a digital camera. Anyway, recently I uploaded one of my videos to a porn site, which Annie noticed and sent me a lovely email, which will remain confidential. Here are some photos of the beautiful and sexy Annie Anklets:
&
Annie resides in both New York and Florida. I really should go to visit “her” in Florida. I’m on the table wearing my school girl outfit with bobby socks and Mary Janes (my panties removed), while my legs are in the air with Annie’s love pole sliding in and out of my pooper as the video camera records the event! “Oh! Dearest baby! You don’t have to wear a condom for mommy brie–I’m not a ball buster — feels sooooo good!”
Annie: “Open your mouth so I can urinate into it.”
brie: “No!”
Annie: “Open it now!”
brie: “Do I have to?”
Annie: “Yes! You have to!”
brie: “Oh. All right, if I must.”
**********************************************
doll house Says:
June 4th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
doll house…
Great Post! I really enjoy your blog…but more than anything I love doll houses!…
*********************************************
more previously,
Elli Kasuga in Japan has the prettiest pictures:
A few years ago Elli sent me a picture from “her” Hawaii vacation, where she was only wearing a bikini! I still think I might have the picture on a back-up disk somewhere, but I can’t find it, and the cd-rom drive keeps locking up making it an ordeal to find stuff.
Anyway, if either Elli sends me another one, or I find the one I probably still have, I’ll post it here in this blog.
So, here I am dearest darlings getting frilly like Elli:
Email to Aunt Janice:
brie: Dearest:
Aunt Janice: <just wanted to say that you are so cute and I would love to be your mommy for a day.>
brie: Oh! Dearest baby! That means I get to sit on your lap with my skirt up and panties down!
Aunt Janice: <Your hairstyle with the headband is very reminiscent of Patty Duke.>
brie: Back in the early 1990’s I would sometimes watch Nick-at-Nite about two in the morning (after getting off wearing girlie clothes) and catch Patty Duke!!! She was so cute, and the hair and clothes were perfect!
Aunt Janice: <Dont your just love the clothing styles on Lavergne and Shirley?>
brie: Also, an occaisional glimpse of Erin Moran, wearing bobby socks on “Happy Days”
Aunt Janice: <I sure do. I love being a retro “Bimbo Sweater Girl” I Love wearing very large cup brassieres under a tight figure hugging sweater. I am also quite the Mommy type since I feel that one should always be properly girdled and have somewhat old fashioned taste in fashion. I always admired June>
brie: Always wearing pearls with her dress while washing the dishes — I love old movies and television shows, mainly because of the women’s clothes.
Aunt Janice: <on the Beaver show but I tend to be more busty and a bit slutty looking. Love Aunt Janice.>
brie: Please send some photos!
byeeeeeeeeee (as Patty Duke would say) for now
brie
Aunt Janice:
********************************************