What’s up with the girls who have really long fingernails and do lesbian scenes? Doesn’t that get scratchy?

It’s a psychological trick. They want to telegraph to the dudes that the girls are not really lesbian, so that low esteem guys don’t feel threatened. After all they want them to think that the girls might pleasure each other once in a while, but obviously they prefer cock. As to the scratchy issue, they put so much lube in the ladies before those scenes that you could probably stick a cheese grater up there without any irritation.

What’s the new thing going on in porn? Do they have any plans to expand their market?

Funny you should ask. AVN, the industry trade rag for porn, just published an article about this last month. It seems that the porn industry figures that the American and European marketplaces are so saturated that there isn’t that much more room for growth, so they are targeting emerging markets these days.

So, what are the emerging markets for porn? China, India and the Middle East. The problem, of course, is that all three of these regions have strong legal and cultural taboos against pornography and in some of these countries you can get beheaded for looking at it. In addition there is generally a tradition of censorship and government monitoring in these regions.

That means that in general, people in those countries aren’t that comfortable entering their name and credit card information no matter how much they crave cock and pursue pussy.

Fortunately the porn industry has found a way around this. In all of these countries pay as you go cell phones are very, very popular. So, they’ve created technology that allows people to pay for porn anonymously with the credit on their cell phones. Subscribers from these areas will also be offered software that masks the URLs of the sites they are visiting, so that even though they are watching asseatingtrannydwarves.com it will look to anyone monitoring them that they are actually looking at a government new s site.

As they said in Jurassic Park, “nature will find a way.”

With the advent of places like Xtube and Red Tube is the DVD side of the industry suffering?

Nope. The multi-million copies of Pirates 2: Stagnetti’s Revenge demonstrate that people will still pay to watch porn. Xtube and Red Tube don’t hurt DVD sales for the same reasons that You Tube showing scenes from mainstream movies doesn’t hurt DVD sales.

Sure on Red Tube you can get a 10 minute porn clip on your computer — but it’s going to be small and, if you blow it up to the size of your screen, fairly grainy. People still like to watch porn on their televisions with decent sound. Also, it’s way easier with a DVD to fast forward through a scene you don’t like and get to whatever your filthy mind desires.

Beyond that, most porn isn’t really purchased. It’s rented and DVD rental places will always need to have new product to keep the jerk offs entertained.

Why is “women-friendly” porn always so fucking boring and pink and fluffy and romantic and the guy practically turns up on a white horse and only fucks her gently and respectfully and with tenderness and no sex-appeal whatsoever for those of us who like it hard and fast?

Because people suck.

If you make movies where the dude ravages the babe hard and fast you get idiots complaining that it’s objectifying women and that you are a horrible human being for making the film.

Then, you try to make it romantic and you get idiots complaining that it’s not hot.

At the end of the day the hottest sex will almost always be boundary crossing and borderline offensive. As a wise man once said “Sex is only dirty if you are doing it right.” But, when you depict boundary crossing stuff it’s going to piss peo ple off, so there will always be some market pressure to produce stuff that doesn’t cross any boundaries.

I sorta feel like the fluffy romantic porn is a good thing, because it can help people get comfortable with the idea of watching porn in a non-threatening way, so that they feel less guilty when they finally build up to renting “Weapons Of Ass Destruction 6″

Think of it as porn training wheels.

Is there a lot of transition from amateur porn to the major studios? Where does mainstream porn hire from, or find their talent?

Going from amateur porn to major studios is almost unheard of. Major studios spend a lot of money on their films and invest a lot of time, energy and cash cultivating the careers of their actresses. The last thing they’d ever want is to be in the middle of creating a new big name, only to have some Internet dork start posting an out of focus poorly lit video of the actress fucking her boyfriend. It would destroy the mystique they need to build up.

Beyond that, amateur porn more often than not means the person does drugs, which is a big no-no at the start of a porn career. The studios want to be able to cast the actresses as long as possible and drugs age the skin and cause the girls to look worse more quickly and become unreliable. Plus, having drugs on the set is an easy way to tempt fate from police forces who love to raid porn studios.

You have to understand that in this day and age, studios often spend hundreds of thousands and, in some cases, millions of dollars on new titles. They are corporate machines who don’t like to take a lot of risks. They spend as much time worrying about OSHA regulations as they do about keeping the dudes hard for their scenes. Of course, once an actress becomes rich and famous if she decides she wants to do some blow, nobody is going to stop her, because then she’s a protected asset. But, at the start of a career they simply won’t tolerate it.

Mainstream porn companies find their talent the same way mainstream movie studios do — through talent agencies. Women create portfolios and head shots and such and audition for agency representation — which is very hard to secure. Usually, once an actress is picked up by a casting agency they’ll try to book her into some high end strip clubs (the type of places that cost $100 and up just to walk in the door). They do this to see how the girls perform in public — because just because a woman thinks she’ll have no problems being sexual in front of strangers, doesn’t mean she won’t freak out when push comes to shove. Plus, it gives the agency a chance to see how she’ll relate to potential fans — since if the girl is successful in films she’ll have to go to film premiers, calendar signings and other promotional events.

If she does well on that circuit they’ll try to get her into galleries — nude still photographs. If those are well received she’ll move up to what is called “foreplay scenes” — essentially the girl masturbating on camera either with her fingers or a dildo. The next step up the food chain is as a “guest actress” in an established star’s film, usually girl on girl at first, then after a couple of films (if the audience likes her) up to guy on girl and then finally staring in her own feature.

Will chest hair make a comeback in the adult film industry?

It could — and you could help make it happen. I’ll get to that later. First, let me tell you why there is so little chest hair in mainstream gay porn. First off, mainstream porn, whether straight or gay, is made to appeal to the widest possible audience. Hence, why you get a lot of blonds with big boobs in straight porn and young dudes with no chest hair in gay porn. A lot of dudes simply like twinks.

Beyond that, in porn they have to put makeup on the body parts people are mostly likely to be looking at — because the bright lights wash out skin tone. They know that for dudes and babes, the chest is important, so it gets a lot of makeup. The thing is that makeup plus hair doesn’t really go together and can look really weird — particularly with a high definition video.

Of course, if hair is your thing, there is plenty of porn made for the bear niche — and not all of it features fat dudes. The downside is that like all niche porn, the lighting and technical quality of bear porn tends to be less than that of mainstream gay porn — simply because there is less money involved.

That said, mainstream porn is constantly evolving to suit whatever the studio considers are the needs and desires of its targeted customers. Best of all the main way they do this is to study Google and see what people have been typing into the search engine lately. Hence why there was all that Sarah Palin porn last month.

So, if you want hairy chested guys in porn all you’ve go to do is get them to notice a spike in searches for it. A couple times a day go to Google and type in “hairy chest gay porn.” Then, get your buddies to do the same. Also, if you have gmail, send emails to yourself reading “hairy chest gay porn.” Post this idea on various gay forums and get other dudes to type it into Google. Do this enough times and you’ll start seeing chest hair sprouting in all directions.

Will pubic hair ever make a comeback in the adult film industry?

Your question could not be more well timed and the answer is “yes.” In fact just this week Hustler announced that they are releasing a film called “The Bush Administration” which will feature nothing but girls with full on muffs. Fleshbot also came out with an entire feature this week on girls with lots of forest for fucking.

The truth is that there is more demand for girls with pubes now than there has been in years, so you should see a lot more of this stuff. The “bare down there” scene was actually sort of an accident to begin with. When Bush stole the 2000 election a lesbian group got the idea to shave off their pubes and mail them to the White House with little cards that read “No Bush” on them. A bunch of girls in the adult industry heard about this and decided to do the same thing. Then when they had their video shoots that week, obviously they didn’t have time to grow their pubes back. Producers liked the look — mostly because it made it easier for the tech folk to apply vaginal make up. Then, customers went gaga for it because they’d never seen it before and it became a trend.

But now that almost every girl is bare it’s become so mundane that dudes are actively looking for videos with normal pubed girls and the industry is responding. So, we’ve gotten Bush out of the White House and back in your porn where it belongs.

How did the Porn Industry feel about the election this week?

There were mixed responses. In general they are happy that Obama won, because they figure that it will put an end to the Federal harassment of dudes like Max Hardcore who was recently convicted of seriously bullshit obscenity charges. If a girl can’t consent to pee on a guy on camera, what can she consent to? I mean, sometimes a girl’s just gotta go!

On the other hand, Proposition K, which would have legalized licensed prostitution in California, got defeated — mostly because the gay marriage thing got all the press coverage and Prop K slipped under the radar. This is bad for everyone. Prostitution will always exist — the only question is can it be made safe for the call girls and rent boys and the customers. Legal, licensed prostitution means that the sex workers don’t need pimps and have much more incentive to insist on condoms — since they will get tested regularly and even the most mild STD would be enough to bounce your license.

Plus, legal prostitution discourages street trade, which is where the really bad shit in hookerland happens. Beyond that, the law in California is really hypocritical now. If I rent a camera and hire a girl to have sex with me in front of the camera and then post that video on the Internet for profit — that’s legal in California. But, if I pay that same girl for the same sexual acts, but don’t film it, that’s illegal. Riddle me that, Mr. Terminator? Beyond that, California is facing a budget crisis — imagine how much state revenue in sales taxes and licensing fees could have been generated?

The adult industry is also pissed off that bowing to federal pressure, Craigslist is now going to make sex workers provide a valid credit card when they post ads in the Erotic Services section. They think this will discourage Craigslist prostitution — because the FBI would be able to subpoena the names of the girls and boys anytime they want. What will really happen is a couple of dumb college boys and girls who haven’t figured out the change will get busted, while all the smart ones will simply post in Casual Encounters.

Can porn ever really be considered “educational?”

Yes. And I wish Dan Savage would watch some and learn something. Recently he wrote a column where he said that vaginas look like “spam.” If he ever watched a straight porn tape he’d learn that he was wrong.

He also insists that male bisexuality doesn’t exist. If he looked around the porn industry and noticed the thousands and thousands of examples of bisexual written erotica and video porn he’d realize just how fucking wrong he was. A dude isn’t going to pay money to watch male bisexual erotica if he doesn’t want to see dick and pussy. And if bisexual males didn’t exist the porn world wouldn’t bother marketing to them. You can lie to your friends about what your dick wants, but your video clerk knows the truth.

Lower the lights, put on some mood music and join us after the jump.

What kind of porn do you write?

I write pretty much whatever the client wants. I’m happy to do gay, straight, bi and fetish stuff. The gay work tends to pay better, because there are less dudes willing to write it. Every straight writing major at Harvard wants to get paid to write teenage lesbian porn, but they don’t want to think about dudes with dudes. For me, it’s really no big deal either way.

That said, there is some stuff I won’t do. I’ve turned down jobs for K9 and necro porn, on the basic assumption that the neither dogs nor the dead can reasonably give consent.

For the most part, I end up writing erotic stories and ads/reviews for escorts. The escort review system is weird, because it’s set up just like Amazon and the dudes take it really seriously. So, when I go to do it I’ll have to take a close look at the girl, see her list of what she does and doesn’t do and then read a few reviews other dudes have written to get a sense of what she’s like. Then I have to create a new narrative of what my experience with her was like. Try doing that for 10 girls a day.

With the dude escorts it’s even harder because the range of what they do and won’t do is more complex. With the girls it’s just a matter of “do they make the dude wear a condom for blow jobs” and “will they do anal.” With the guys it’s like “do they top only,” “do they bottom only,” “are they versatile,” are they “straight-acting,” and do I have to describe how big their dick is or is it more important to describe how tight their ass is. A lot of it is that gay dudes are much more discriminating about their escorts and tend to be looking for very specific things. Straight dudes are just looking for pretty girls who give head.

What’s your research like?

I hit up ASSTR.org whenever I get a new fetish. You can search there for a ton of stories on any kink you want and learn all the lingo. People into porn, particularly fetish stuff, are very particular about the words they use to describe the shit they want to think about doing. If you blow the lingo, you lose the readers. Literotica is also a good place to research, but it seems to run a bit behind the times on some fetish stuff.  To keep up with trends, I read AVN News and Fleshbot.

What’s the weirdest porn you’ve ever come across?

I think that’s generally a matter of opinion. I could name some really fucked up shit, but for me personally, I find the dudes who like to watch women blowing up balloons to be really weird; other people would argue that it’s “better” because it objectifies the balloons instead of the women. I think “crush” porn is fucked up, because while I’m no fan of cockroaches I can’t imagine wanting to masturbate while they are getting smashed. But the thing to remember is that porn is supposed to be weird. There is always a sense of boundary crossing in any good porn.

How do the actors do those anal shots so easily?

This is the question I’ve been asked the most in porn. In real life, you have to enter the receptive partner’s backside fairly slowly or you risk pain or other problems. Also, you usually need lots and lots of lube, which you don’t see in porn. The answer is that a lot of anal sex scenes are all about special effects. They have specially made water pistols that look like penises that are made to be super slippery. Plus, they pre-lube and stretch out the girl before the scene with butt plugs and such. In some cases they even have fakes assholes. So, what you may be seeing is a girl moaning while a cock shaped water pistol is going in and out of a rubber anus somewhere in her general vicinity.

(Send your dirty questions to iporn [at] stinque.com)