I get asked that question a lot. The truth is I didn’t, I just quit making DVDs.
When I started in this biz in 1992 there was no internet, at least not as we know it, and Porn Valley was booming. Distributors couldn’t get enough product, and it wasn’t too hard to get in. That and nobody told me I couldn’t….
The main thing it was, was fun we were all having fun shooting porn, mostly none of us thought of what we were doing as “art”, excepting maybe Paul Thomas. We were thumbing our nose at society and having fun. I remember Rog from rogreviews once asked me how long I planned to stay in porn and I told him, until it stops being fun.
And that’s what happened, it stopped being fun. I had to deal with scumbags who would go 270 days past due on an 8000.00 dollar invoice, then bounce three checks. Even the best payers went 90 days past due on product that had a very thin margin to begin with. But that was OK because we were having fun making it. We had fun at the CES Show, before AVN took it over and in conjunction with the economy, ran it into the ground. Back when CES had it you had to at least be bright enough to be able to print a business card saying you were in the biz to get in, it was a show for people in the biz, store owners and the like, not a fan show, and it was free to attend.
When AVN got a hold of it it started transitioning to a fan show, good for AVN bad for the biz. The internet dealt the deathblow with mom and pop video stores going out of biz left and right the biz had nobody left to attend BUT the fans.
But shooting was still fun. I never intended to be in front of the camera, that happened by accident and it’s another story entirely but I had a lot of guys writing me or coming up to me at hockey games or trade shows saying man you are my hero. This always struck me as odd….why I would ask. They always said because you are like me, you are a regular guy who gets to bang all these gorgeous girls and you don’t have a big head about it. I dont want to see some long hair or some body builder banging these girls, I want to see someone like me, you give us all hope man, keep up the good work.
There’s a lesson there that porn still hasn’t learned.
It quit being fun with an influx of people, mainly performers who had no sense of the history or the social structure of the business, and didn’t care, they werent having fun they were making a dollar check, like a hooker who clock watches, their hearts weren’t in it. Guys who would rather be with guys, girls who would rather be anyplace. And the boomers saw it and lost interest.
Who are the boomers? The baby boomers, the guys who were porns core audience, the largest segment of the population, the guys who made porn big business in the 80s and 90s. The guys who now could care less because porn doesn’t look fun anymore, because it isn’t.
So now I shoot for southernbukkake.com, a niche that isn’t saturated and isn’t as available on the net and one thing nobody who has ever seen one of my shoots can say is that we don’t have fun. The guys, the girls, the cameramen, the make up artist. I have girls who come to other girls shoots just to hang out cuz its FUN. I pride myself in that. When was the last time any porn chick in porn valley went to a shoot without being paid, just because it would be fun to hang out? Hint: It don’t happen.
So now I stick to the internet and I have discovered this group of website owners, all independents who are doing porn and having fun, girls like Marie Madison, whom I recently met.
I often got asked why did you quit NASA and the answer has always been: It quit being fun.
How long will I keep doing southernbukkake and stripperfacials?
You know the answer.
8 Responses
[New Post] Why I Quit Making Porn – via #twitoaster http://www.mikesouth.com/mike-south-comm…
I hear ya Mike, loud and clear. There are few things more satisfying than being able to earn a living doing something you enjoy.
I don’t know if you realize it Mike, but you just wrote an all encompassing “manifesto” that sums up the entire state of this industry. Perfectly. It’s kind of like the monologue Robert De Niro gave at the end of “Casino” about how Las Vegas changed. They need to print this and stick it on the Chatsworth city limits sign for anyone looking to break in to this business to read. Your experiences and descriptions of change within this industry also speak true to an even larger sense of what is happening in business and entrepreneurialism across this country.
It is customary in life and career to criticize any type of movement that proceeds the last one, but what you’re saying is not age old criticism. It is fact. Put anyone in a time machine and drop them in 2011 and your words would ring true. Being a part of the bigger machine isn’t fun anymore.
How on earth could you getting to fuck a bunch of hot women give “regular guys” hope? How stupid do these “regular guys” have to be to fail to realize that the only reason why you get to fuck them is because you’re paying them to appear on film!
Porn used to feature only “long hairs and body builders” fucking these women because, even just 20 years ago, people realized that porn was just fantasy. A kind of “this is what movie stars and titans of industries look like when they’re having sex” moment. The fact that that became boring, or even offensive, to “regular guys” is because “regular guys” don’t know how to fucking think analytically any more. They’re completely wrapped up in their short-term interests and their emotions.
These are the same kinds of guys who have invaded the porn industry itself and no longer made it “fun” for you to be in the business. You – with your “regular guy porn” and it’s implicit message – contributed to that mentality (or at least contributed to preventing it from being corrected). It created one fewer part of life where rational thought and proper perspective was encouraged. So seriously, stop complaining. You reap what you sew.
Dantes, you’re going to thank me later. I think I just figured out what you problem with Mike (or rather yourself) is. Seems you prefer the smooth-skinned, pretty boy, long-haired, body builders. The solution is simple, just switch to gay porn. You’ll be so much happier once you embrace your true nature and desires.
Actually Dantes to reap means to harvest to sew means…well hopefully you know what it means….the word you are searching for however is “sow” meaning roughly to plant.
But I get it, we all get what we deserve, be it Cameron Todd Willingham or Jeffery Dahmer. Because at heart we are all immoral, at least in your eyes, then nothing good can possibly happen to us in the long run. Well you’d be wrong. I think I live a charmed life AND If I can make money banging hot girls in this biz…anyone can, it’s all about a psychological concept called transference, and that’s what they are talking about when they say I give them hope.
Could be a new entry to the “real men” series… “What real men SEW”
Oh, sew what, South? What’s your pernt?
I think Dantes should get an award for using the words “guys” “fucking” and “thinking analytically” all in the same paragraph.