Pornstar

by Ian Gittler

A former porn photographer exposes the evils of the industry, revealing the heartbreak, exploitation, and human frailty that fuels this multi-billion dollar business.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, Film

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 18, 1999

Reviews

[Damon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've really wanted to read this for ten years now, and am so glad I finally did. It's such an amazingly delicate look into the lives and minds of a very insular fringe of society. Features a great introduction by Bret Easton Ellis.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not sure how I got it, but I received a copy of this book back around 1999 when it first came out and I remembered how dated it seemed even then. I guess in part because Savannah (the girl on the cover, and who Gittler humblebrags about having sex with) had shot herself 5 years prior to the publishing of the book, and all the other photos are from around 1991-1994. Since this was before digital photography, the photos are more raw, and haven't been manipulated. You see things like pockmarked faces under thick makeup and the "chewed up" (his words) look of the scarred nipples from bad boobjobs. It's really depressing to flip through, and moreso when you read his description of their appearance, their apartments, how worn out and tired they seem, and things like how after a raunchy stripclub stage show, there were "literally two $1 bills" crumpled up next to the woman.

At least two of the people in the book became HIV+ not long publication, including Marc Wallice, who knew he was infected, but hid his status and subsequently infected several women. Another 2-3 committed suicide (not including Savannah) and the rest were already nearing the end of their careers. It's sad, but in a pathetic way, not in a cautionary tale way. Gittler came off as two-faced. He seems to know, or at least suspect how damaged and lonely they are, and writes demeaning things about them, but also wants to fuck them and photograph them, for free, and once he has no more use for the people he photographed, he tossed them away. It's just a lousy book in every regard.

[Leib Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Review:
Pornstar by Ian Gittler
Rating: 3/5 stars
"Just so-so. It could have been a lot more."

---

Verdict: Not recommended at the price I paid for it — $25.39. Maybe more like $4. (Interestingly enough, new copies of this book are going for $205 on Amazon. Methinks not.)

This book is written by an outsider, and it is the first such book I've read about the industry. The author is a photographer, and the book is more photography-focused.

If Gittler had just conducted actual interviews with the performers, there might have been a more interesting book here. But he chose not to, instead trying to create an interesting venue for his photography. (Which is not really all that interesting these days, because with the internet you can look at as much *beep* as you want to for free. And the videography of every single one of these performers is available for free.)

Leastways, the book is best understood as a snapshot of what the industry was like in the early '90s — 30 years ago. This was way back in the days when people had VCRs.

I suspect that the industry has changed dramatically with the advent of online service providers and content creators.

In that way, this book is the equivalent of an anthropological fossil, useful if you want to know what the industry looked like back in those days.

It's not exactly unlike what I expected: a bunch of people with problems, living unstable lives in something resembling a wasteland.

The author himself describes it as a "sad subculture" (p. 77), and a lot of people dealt with addiction and homelessness (pp. 76, 161).

There's also plenty of childhood sexual abuse and parental neglect.

(p. 167, Jon Dough):

"So, anyway, my mom has this black guy named Bobcat Jones moved in with us. He was bad. Overtime there were rapes in my house. My brother and I — he was seven and I was 8 — we wanted to kill him."

(Ibid.): "Pretty soon after that [Bobcat moves out], a friend of hers, a black woman named Ann, moves in with us. By this time I've already been dumped and whoever's lap would take me. Back and forth, back and forth. My mom and Ann drove me up to Bakersfield — they were going to leave me with my mom's stepfather...... I'm listening to my mother and Ann talking... That's when I first understood, or learned, that my mom was a lesbian."

(p. 167, April Rayne): She says that at 12 she had her first boyfriend, a 28-year-old guy named Hector.

(p. 169): "I was raped when I was nine," she says. "You have to understand: my dad always called me his favorite son, y'know, he said he wanted to teach me to be tough. So he would drop me off in places like Satwell, y'know, bad neighborhoods, and let me find my own way home. I wandered into some courtyard..... I think three black guys basically passed me around. I know there were two more, Mexicans, standing watch by the gates. Then I think I blacked out."

Of the performers listed below, four out of the 16 have died, and of those four, two died by suicide.

Jon Dough committed suicide after his divorce. He had sex with something like 101 women in one movie alone, over the course of three days. I'm just not sure what could be so bewitching about that one woman that he had to end his life over her, after he had done all of that. Also, in the 101-women movie, about seven of the models he had to be with were... black. If he didn't want to commit suicide after that, he should have been set to die in his bed of natural causes.

Savannah committed suicide immediately after she injured her face in a car accident.

It's also interesting that life for these performers was so transient that disconnected phone numbers — from one week to the next — were a regular thing (pp. 32, 35, 159, 161) for this author.

Men and women are not the same thing in this business: the men seem to be just as damaged, but somehow they have a much longer shelf life in the industry.

And this is for practical reasons: any single woman with a reasonable body shape can perform. But among men, statistically, about 0.25% are above seven inches, and about 0.001% or less are above eight inches.

And then, from that subset, you have the ones who are actually interested in doing that job.

And then, from that even smaller subset, the ones who do not have, um, "performance anxiety."

---

Gittler's writing puts me in mind, just vaguely, of that Hunter Thompson tough-guy style.

Quotes

(p. 159) Davis is handsome in a classic, hunky way. And he has that glint in his eye, the "you know that I know that you know that I fucked every girl in this room of her ass at least twice and have been paid for it" male pornstar glow.

(p. 157) I could die tomorrow. I'm not going to build a life around some idea that everything lasts forever.

(p. 164, author) I fooled around with enough boys in high school and college to know I'm not gay...... And suddenly I'm thinking about my first homosexual encounter, out on Fire Island with a man more than twice my age, and the experience takes on a hue of impropriety, wrongness.

(p. 170, Stagliano) Stagliano angrily blurts out the answer to a question I can't ask. "I got HIV from getting fucked in the ass in Brazil by a transsexual with a cut on his dick. I make no secret about it. But I don't want to talk about it anymore than that."

People Interviewed

All very briefly.

- Hypatia Lee
- Heather Hunter
- Asia Carrera
- Ron Jeremy (fat, ugly hedgehog)
- TT Boy
- Savannah
- Dominique Simone
- Sean Michaels
- Lisa Ann
- April Rayne
- Jenna Fine
- Max Wallice
- Joey Silvera
- Michael Zen
- Jon Dough
- John Stagliano

[Kevin Costain · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a wild, debaucherous, 1990s ride through an industry so often shrouded in hate or taboo. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but mostly fluff. What you have here is a person interviewing these people (pornstars) as people. Glitter even seems to get to know some of them well. A fascinating record of history.

[Jimmy Uldbjerg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tragic story about the empty lives of porn actors, This goes through the ninetees. I don`t want to know what it`s like these days.

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 4 out of 5]

Able to do just about anything at the height of its success, Season 5 Episode 21 of SEINFELD was definitely not the Opposite. Aside from George Costanza's troubles, said episode also has Kramer nudging into the publishing business by pitching a coffee table book about coffee tables that could transform into a quasi coffee table itself. A swank product, if you can drum up an audience. Capping the 1980s, the (cheap) VHS boom of the 1990s blew the roof off the adult video industry, prompting an inverse version of the eighties celebrity coffee-table book about its major players and performers. In 1999, PORNSTAR set out to be the first cool picture book to come along in years, a glowing love letter to a taboo industry before it exploded with the open distribution system of the internet.

Just as DAWN OF THE DEAD in 1978 promised that when there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth, PORNSTAR's author pledged from before inception of this magnum opus coffee table book that since all [his] rock heroes had already been photographed, the natural subject choice for a fledgling commercial photographer was adult film performers. The author's 1990s opinion was that sex on film was very rock and roll, quenching his burning desire for pictorial stardom, fanned by contract work capturing rock bands for magazines. Instead of finding a world of alternate glitz and glamor, the not so revered, yet still glittering other side of Hollywood, PORNSTAR presents a world of bored, emotionally inaccessible porn people. It was a time when actors doing X-rated work were pigeonholed and could not break the mold to move across town onto the fancy silver screen of worldwide fame and stardom. Grudging acceptance of adult films was still far off, an industry pushed into the shadows and grinding through talent, always on the lookout for fresh faces. It seems that everyone was looking to get out but remained stuck by circumstance and big, fast money. PORNSTAR is a book of interview style portraits of porn stars, revealing that they are people like everyone else, irrespective of how they earn their living. A business where promiscuity meant self-destruction, disaffectation, and violence, a far cry from liberation, in turn making a happy tidy book about this sad subculture a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE.

Besides throwing good money after bad and considering effort already sunk into the project as well as the mighty level of ego, why then make this book? By no means a chronology, history, or biographical account of the adult film industry, PORNSTAR is probably not what most people think it is; and it's not an expose or a journalistic endeavor offering a realistic look at the industry or the plight of its performers and fringe players. PORNSTAR comes off as a naughty scrapbook of someone's youthful trip out west to the California or a nerdist attempt to inveigle and be close to greatness. A star struck youngster who happened to stumble off a Van Nuys sidewalk onto a film set, self admittedly openly straight, and bent on producing a picture book casting the early to mid 90s adult film scene in a positive light. Dismissing the premise that there might be unhealthy pathologies at work in the industry and its players, PORNSTAR is a lightweight affair that reeks of pot and cheap beer and is perfect for those that it tangentially makes fun of--polyester tourists. For those with encyclopedic knowledge of the early VHS years of the adult film industry, PORNSTAR may be an abbreviated WHO'S WHO, a fun exercise of memory and recognition. To the uninitiated, however, the waffling between the author's adoration, indulgence, and frustration with the players will fall short of a serious documentary effort of the workings of the industry or what the lives of the performers really was like. Merely scratching the surface and managing to wear off a bit of the sheen, PORNSTAR could've been a contender. Instead it's a slick promo sheet summary with pictures that manages to fumble the case.

[Marcia Guimaraes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ian Gittler is a photographer who thought porn was a job like any other, like many do, despiste the rumors that people who work in this industry are oftentimes victims of abuse (prior, during and after it). It was interesting to read it and follow his change of thought as he not only photographed but talked and befriended many of the porn “stars”. There’s a mini biography for some of them and the reader realizes it has never been easy for these people. Pretty much all of them came from a past of abuse and followed a self destructive path. I had to put this book away sometimes, because it was just very sad to read the stories. Even so, I wish he could have gone deeper into theirs lives, but I understand it was a short period of time they had together (the shooting) and some were not willing to share (some didn’t even realized that what they were sharing was pure abuse).

[Ellison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author aspires to spend time with adult stars FOR FREE, so, he coms up with the idea to write a coffee table book. He spends a DECADE off and on interviewing performers and snatching pix when he can, appears to not be a happy life, the copy I viewed had missing pages, previous viewers felt that the images were worth keeping for private collection? Swearing.

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

En "Pornstar" Gittler narra su travesía en el mundo de la producción de cine para adultos.
Su objetivo inicial era retratar la vida de los personajes de esta industria y mostrar al público en general que estas personas no son tan diferentes de las estrellas de cine o los 'rockstars', llevando vidas llenas de glamour.
Sin embargo, el contacto con productores, directores, actrices y actores y un terrible suceso relacionado con una de las más reconocidas actrices cambia el enfoque de Gittler lo que le permitirá darse cuenta que él no es un extraño a las obsesiones y motivaciones de los personajes que documenta así como de los ejes que coadyuvan a que un individuo se convierta en un 'pornstar'.