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“Deep Throat,” “Behind the Green Door,” “The Devil in Miss Jones,” and the original “Debbie Does Dallas” are all cited as tentpole (ahem) movies of porn’s Golden Age. They were high-budget productions worthy of the mini-phenomenon in America known as “Porno Chic.”
But the Golden Age is strictly a porn industry term. It is used by old-timers in the business to describe that period in which making porn was a license to print money. Of course, there was also that outlaw aspect of porn at that time, too, as it was technically illegal to film it, and the old-timers remember the 70′s and early 80′s as an era of great camaraderie (although accounts from that time paint a different picture – but that is a different story).
As I’ve become more aware of porn from that time, though, I realize that the good old days weren’t always good. There’s a reason that the running joke about 70′s porn includes visible boom mics and wooden acting. For every “Devil in Miss Jones” there were hundreds of “Dickman & Throbbin”s.
“Dickman & Throbbin” features John Holmes and a young Tom Byron in tights, plopped into the middle of a movie about something else. You get the feeling that the original movie ran out of money and was put on the shelf, then the Holmes scenes were flown in. It is an awful movie save for a delicious performance by Amber Lynn.
So I think there is a disconnect between perception and reality with regard to classic porn’s quality versus its contemporary counterparts. Even if the point could be made that Golden Agers were artists and hippies and free thinkers and that many of today’s performers are just cashing a check, the marketplace is demanding that today’s movies be technically superior.
Because making porn is no longer the money-making enterprise it once was, producers of today’s features need to make smart choices on limited budgets. Sets need to look realistic (especially in parodies), and every moment needs to be accounted for.
“Dickman & Throbbin” would not pass muster today.
We visited the filming of New Sensations’ “Golden Girls: An XXX Parody” and had director Lee Roy Myers take us through the set, which looked eerily similar to the one Bea Arthur made her own in the 80′s sitcom original.
While you may have your doubts (and I initially had mine) about the sense of making a porn about grandmothers, you will see that Myers and crew made some very smart choices with regard to a narrative technique called a flashback.
Oh, and there were also some people (Raylene and Rocco Reed) having sex there.
