From Tout Suite to the Tubes

I worked steadily through the post-9/11 recession of 2001-2002 as an adult film director for one of the first great earners of the web-porn revolution, blacksonblondes.com, and as a cameraman on many mainstream high-budget porn movies. Neither I nor the actors I shot ever seemed to feel the belt tighten appreciably. I went to Hawaii on a whim, and called it my right; every working actress in the game worth her salt roared up to her shoots in an elaborately expensive ride.

Things are different now.

Porn agent Mark Spiegler reports from the San Fernando Valley that nearly all of the actresses he represents are working less in adult film. “There are simply less shoots to go around. My girls are A-listers, so they still make a good living. But they’re out there less, certainly.”

Porn director Billy Watson of manojob.com agrees. “I voluntarily took a pay cut. I felt like I sort of had to. I’m paying my actors less. I’m paying them less often. I want to make sure the ship stays afloat.”

David Gross, a producer for Vantage Video, also confirmed that the recession has taken its toll on an industry once famous for overpaying its participants. “Absolutely, I pay my performers and directors less. You have to make some cuts, or find a new job.”

One natural result of the economic hardship? More competition for performing roles.

“You just can’t be a prima donna anymore,” says Gross. “There are too many people out there looking for a job.”

Spiegler was cross-over starlet Sasha Grey’s original agent, and he supports Gross’s sentiments. “There are more girls in this business now than at any time since I’ve been around, which is since 1995. They grow up watching porn, I guess, so it’s less of a big deal to them. So we got less productions but more actors. It’s crazy.”

“Vivid’s shooting less,” says Spiegler. “Red Light District is shooting less. I used to bring my new actresses over to Red Light to meet all the directors; they were shooting 10 movies a week. It’s just not the same anymore.”

To compound the adult film industry’s financial woes, the proliferation of a great number of “tube” sites, from which surfers can view unlimited free samples of porn movies ranging from anywhere from 30 seconds to entire hour-long clips, have drained monies from the pockets of porn producers. According to current Alexa ratings, PornHub, YouPorn, and Tube8—all tube sites, are among the top 75 trafficked sites on the internet.

“The stuff that’s on the tube sites is better and more varied than the stuff he used to pay $30 a month for,” admits Billy Watson. “There’s no codecs, there’s no download. Admittedly, it’s hard for the consumer to do better than that.”

A veteran employee for a porno shop called “Maxx’s Adult Emporium,” located in Durham, North Carolina, echoes Watson’s concern. “Used to be, on a rainy day, we could have between 10 and 15 guys back in the booths, and plenty walking around the store,” says Barry L., a good-looking black man in his mid-thirties. “But nowadays you don’t have near half the business you used to. How could I tell the economy went bad? When I noticed the construction workers weren’t coming in anymore.”

But is the adult industry in danger of grinding to a halt?

“Absolutely not,” says Gross. “The tubes are definitely bringing down the industry, but they’re not killing it. The trick is to evolve. You constantly have to be changing. I do lots of work with niches. I do hidden-camera…smoking fetish…Hidden-MILF. People are devoted to their niche, whatever it may be.”

Billy Watson feels similarly. “I’m actually having the best months I’ve ever had. I shoot handjobs exclusively, and believe it or not, there are people out there who love the stuff. And you know, you can’t really get a lot of good handjob content on the tube sites, thank God. So my fan base keeps coming back.”

Mark Spiegler seems relatively unworried about the perils facing the porn industry, too. “I represent very talented women. They’re always going to be in demand, even if they’re not working seven days a week, like they used to. I tell them, maybe that’s a good thing. They shouldn’t be working seven days a week in the first place.”

What will become of the sex industry, then? Like the auto, airline, and banking industries, porn has seen a large-scale cutback in growth over the last few years, and the future seems to promise only more trimming of the fat. More stringent demands will surely be made of the performers, as they are asked to do more with less: economy-sized bottles of lube may become the rule, perhaps. Hand towels will certainly be shared. Habitually-late actresses may find themselves ignored, instead of coddled; and sleazy directors expecting clandestine nose-nuzzles in the bathroom may find their shenanigans are no longer tolerated. Yes, the game is changing. Money, as always, is stirring the pot.

But porn has never been for the faint of heart, and wily performers will always find a way to survive. Tara Lynn Foxx, a current mainstream porn star, 19 years old and wise beyond her years, is a case in point. With nearly a year of experience under her belt, she is markedly cynical about an industry that she says “has its fair share of douchebags.”

“The money was really good when I started. Now it’s not as good. California is all fucked up, and the economy has really affected porn. Still, I’m definitely making more than the average person. What they make in a week, I make in a day.”

Foxx has been baring it all in adult videos for just over nine months. “February was my first month,” she remembers. “But I peaked in May. When things were good, I was working 15 days a month—and some of those days were double-booked. A thousand bucks is the average these days for a boy-girl,” she says, “so that’s a lot of money, if you do the math.”

But as porn sales have dropped, the demand for Foxx to appear on camera has also fallen. “I’m still making good money—it’s just not ginormous amounts of money,” she says, laughing. “My timing is bad. My agent, who has been in this business for half my life, says that five years ago, I would have been making two or three thousand dollars a scene. And that’s like insane, ridiculous, out of the question now.”

But Foxx reminds me that there’s always more than one way to skin a cat. “The easy way to fill the holes in your schedule is to become a makeup artist. You’ve already shot with the directors, you know everybody, and you can get jobs. Of course,” she admits, “makeup artists are being cut, too.

“Then there’s web-camming,” she says. “And your personal site. Personal sites don’t really do that well. You can make anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand dollars per month off your site, depending on how much work you put into it—but it’s something.”

Foxx pauses, considering. “Then I guess there’s feature dancing. Actually, you can make more money doing that sometimes than you can from porn. You get paid for every set you do, and most girls do three sets a night. You sell your merchandise, and you do private dances with their fans. Then you get tips, so add it all up, and porn stars make a lot of money being a stripper. It’s sick.”

The speakers are different, but the message remains the same: Diversify. Be creative. Think outside the box.

“You’d be surprised, but it’s our booths that actually keep us in business,” Barry of Maxx’s Adult Emporium declares. “The video rooms accumulate more money than the video sales.”

I ask him how much the video rooms cost to rent. He answers swiftly, “One dollar will get you four minutes.” I say that sounds like a pretty fair deal.

“Five dollars will get you 24,” says Barry, grinning. He leans back against the counter of Maxx’s surveys the store’s treasures, its videos in large cases, the mountains of purplish dildos stacked up beside gleaming vibrators. “A little bonus time.”

This piece was originally published in SexIs Magazine.