In a world with no internet and no home video, then who knows? But in our world, we have the internet and we have home video. Even before the internet home video killed the big-screen porn theater, so we’d have to kill not only the internet but DVDs and video tapes, and cable TV. But without video tape we’d probably have developed cheap-ass film projectors like they used to have in schools and people would have rented films instead of tapes or disks.
Yeah, they would have been annoying and not nearly as cheap and convenient as video tapes but the market would be pretty much the same, the only difference is the lack of taping broadcast content for viewing later. Even back in the olden-days they had “stag films” on regular old literal film, the only problem is you had to have a projector and know a guy who knew a guy. Given the social changes of the 70s and 80s, we’d have seen these spread to near-ubiquity, in the absence of VCRs and cable.
And given a choice between seeing porn at home, where you can jerk off in private, or at a theater, which do you think most people would choose?
Are you saying that you’ve never seen an actual porn film? Because I don’t see any relevance here to the subject of porn. Nudity is not porn. Repeat one million times.
I’m old enough to remember the days of “Porno Chic”, and porn films in theaters. Before the advent of home video, there was a genuine effort to make films with plots that could stand up on their own.
The best example isn’t in the US, but in Denmark with the very popular Zodiac series of films - In The Sign of Venus, In the Sign of Gemini, In the Sign of the Lion, In the Sign of Scorpio and In the Sign of Sagittarius. They are fun, silly films with hard-core sex. Sort of like the “Carry On” films, but with penetration.
Per thenumbers.com the US release first-run grossed $13.5 million and the eventual cumulative gross $23.4 million. However consider (a) that there were two theatrical versions released: R-edited and X/“unrated”, depending on what could be advertised in each location; (b) that the near universal opinion of it was, to borrow a phrase from Beavis and Butthead, “it’s terrible AND it sucks”. If Ebert’s review is to be believed, in the first few days there were long lines to check out the big budget sex epic with the highfalutin’ Brits (and Little Alex doin’ it in the height of Roman Fashion) just for the novelty/titillation factor; but they only found themselves having to endure one epic trainwreck.
Lars von Trier’s ‘Nymphomaniac’ is out, and it is a mainstream film with hard-core sex in it. I don’t expect it to make a whole lot of money. Other mainstream hardcore films have been released, and didn’t do all that much.
The only way I could see porn competing with traditional box office is if the producers developed some kind of sexual experience that was not available at home, and provided a relatively anonymous way to experience it. Maybe some kind of virtual reality or holodeck type show.
From the reviews I’ve read, there is no possible way to construe Nymphomaniac as porn. Or The Brown Bunny or Shortbus or the other few art films that have contained an actual sex scene in recent years. Even the x-rated Caligula is hard to claim as actual porn.
Like Potter Stewart, the country may not be able to pin down a definition of porn, but we know it when we see it. Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door were porn. There are literally no mainstream equivalents. Nobody can point to an example of what the OP asked for as a data point. We’re all pulling stuff out of our asses. And you know what? In this case that’s not porn either.
Most people watch porn to masturbate, which is why most clips are under 10 minutes long. You’d probably have to have a short before the real movie, like they used to do with cartoons. Just have a short porn video, all the guys in the theater can masturbate then everyone watches the real movie. Of course that would involve a society with no shame about sex. Plus with everyone’s varied tastes thanks to the internet I doubt anyone is going to pay to go to a theater for what they can see for free at home. However that argument could apply to regular films too, and people still pay to see movies.
Who watches 90 minute porn videos?
Also free porn websites that host videos for free only started around ~2006 I think (I know youtube started in 2004, I’m assuming those sites started later). So comparing the gross revenue of films from the 90s or 70s is not a good comparison.
I’ve seen both versions of Pirates, and hell, they are fine cable fare. Wouldn’t go to see them in a theater, but it’s not because they’re so raunchy, more because they are not RIVETING films. I guess they are not a lot worse than “Cutthroat Island” AND they have explicit sex, or semi-explicit sex in the cut versions. They are really not worth your full attention unless you are masturbating to them, but great in the background while you browse the net or whatever.
Though there is some explicit bondage in the books, they fit comfortably into the romance genre, or erotic romance as they now call them. (IMHO erotic romances are a natural evolution for romance novels now that big publishers no longer control the genre and women can write and read what they want.)
For example, you’re eight long chapters into “Fifty Shades of Grey” before the protagonist so much as gets kissed.
I recently watched a full length hardcore video called “Taken” (the one with Ginger Lynn Allen)> It was fully explicit XXX but had a lot more attention paid to character development than porn typically does. I was watching it because it was so different from most porn films. The explicit sex REALLY slowed the story down. It was an ambitious attempt at making a XXX film with mainstream values, but … didn’t really succeed. Interesting, from a technical point of view, but kind of a bore to watch as entertainment.
I’d think the last thing a porn director wants from his audience is yawns, and that’s what you’d get with feature length films. I saw Pirates, but not without fast forwarding.
And yeah, “what’s the point?” Can I buy a prorated ticket that admits me for 10 minutes?
It’d take a massive cultural shift and the absence of the internet, Blu-ray, DVDs, and even VCRs for this to happen. The only way I could picture this in the U.S. is if the 70s just kept on truckin’ and technology stagnated. I could kind of see being young and taking your adventurous girlfriend to a porno flick on a lark, but even then it wouldn’t be as regular as mainstream film attendance.
