Do I submit the script to a porn studio? Do I need to know someone who’se already in the business?
I know there were a few pornographers on the board in years past, but am unsure if any are still participating.
They never covered this in my screenwriting class…
From what I understand, porn production companies do not accept scripts from outside sources.
Check out this
The thread title begs for some sarcastic response involving the concept of novelty in porno, but I can’t quite get it. Is it anal before fisting this time?
Porn flirted with arty, innovative scripts back in the late 70s (See Boogie Nights for some background). Unfortunately, someone discovered that shot-on-video, no plot, no dialogue, costumes or makeup actually sold better.
Maybe you should try to get in touch with someone like Candida Royale.
I actually have a question about porn movie scripts. I’ve always wondered how specific they are about the sex scenes. Do they actually give stage instructions for the entire sex scene or does it just have a general instruction to “Have sex?”
What about all the “Yeah, baby,” And “I’m gonna come” type lines during the sex? Are those scripted or ad libbed?
How detailed are these scripts? Does anybody know?
It’s all about the director. He or she directs the action and tells the actors/actresses what to do. HBO has a new late night series called Pornucopia that addresses alot of myths and fallacies about the adult industry.
I think some are general while some are blow by blow.
So to speak. 
Porn movies don’t have scripts.
The ones that have a story are made up on the day, usually two minutes before the camera rolls.
If you want an actual plot with dialogue, about your only option is softcore – Vivid and Wicked have done some plot-heavy flicks, and may still do them, but in hardcore, plot is an element they’ve dispensed with and dialogue is just whatever spurts out of the actors between sex scenes.
One exception would be “The Fashionistas” – I dunno where it came from, or if more stuff like it has been made. But it did have an actual plot. My knowledge of hardcore is limited as most of it strikes me as insanely boring from a dramatic point of view.
Softcore still has scripts, but the acting and direction are typically so bad, and the scripts so cornball, that you’re really wasting your time. Your best bet if you want to do something with plot and a strong sexual element is to do an erotic thriller. That genre, at least, ranges from pretty much straight up detective stories with a sex scene or two and some fairly major stars, like The Hot Spot, to softcore porn with a thriller-style plot, like “Forbidden Sins” with plenty of stuff in between.
In short, if you want to do a sexy film with strong plot elements, the erotic thriller genre is by far the best game in town. It’s pretty much undefined. I don’t know of any hardcore that would qualify as an erotic thriller, however.
The problem with hardcore is you can sell about as many videos of two or more people humping nonstop in a hotel room, as you can of anything with more elaborate production values.
You go to the producer’s office and say, “I’d like to submit my script”, and the producer says, “Yeah, well I’ve got something I’d like to submit to you - right - here” Wucka chucka wucka chucka…
It seems to me that porn is a pretty closed business. Basically, you have to be a money guy to get to play. So, there’s like a couple of dozen mogul-types and maybe 10 male porn actors (why the same 10 guys over and over?) in a closed loop, an oligarchy. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the whole thing was controlled by the mafia or something. The only way to break into porn, it seems, is to be a female porn actor, with fake tits and no problem with being abused and buttfucked.
It is difficult to submit any sort of script, ever since Art Buchwald won his case against the credited author of the Coming to America movie.
If you send in a script about (I dunno) elfin lesbians to a company who later makes a movie about hobbit lesbians, you might have legal recourse. That is why companies no longer even dare to read outside scripts.
An old thread, which gives a good insight into one part of the business.
You got a little bit of misspelling on your chin. I think you mean “… myths and **phallacies…”
Damn.
You can tell how detailed the script is by the writer’s choice of Post-It note size.
One of the most popular gay porn series for instance is First Time Tryers. The “plot” is that good looking gay guys in various cities (usually LA or San Diego, but they’ve also travelled to Atlanta, Ft. Worth, Chicago, etc.) who have never done porn are offered $1,000 each to have sex with a stranger (who is also paid $1000) on tape. The guys are briefly interviewed and then go at it. There’s no plot but the movies are extremely popular- there’s no telling how many times they recoup that $2,000 investment for coupling.
(I know this from being a fan of… investigative journalism… and their reports on… amateur porn…)
Sweetie, the back of the box is not “investigative journalism.”
Nightdreams had a plot and a script. Pretty weak (Woman can’t have orgasms. Goes to research facility where she’s wired up in an observation room. Audience sees her fantasies. Finds True Love at the end.) but it still had a plot and some ‘acting’. It’s a very surreal film (blowing a giant Cream of Wheat box while a dancing toasts plays Old Man River on a saxophone in the gackground) by the same guy who made Café Flesh and Caligari. It’s a hardcore film; but admittedly, an older one (from the '80s).
Krokodil is right, though; there’s a much higher profit margin when you just show fucking shot on videotape. Let’s face it: Guys just want to see hot chicks, and fantasize about being with them. IMO they don’t care about a plot.
Personally I would like to shoot a ‘live-action hentai’. A friend of mine who was (is?) in the porn website biz wanted to do something along those lines, and I wrote a very graphic scene involving a lesbian vampire and her victim. Hot girl-on-girl action with a very bloody climax. I can see a feature-length horror-porn film that would be very stylish, very hot, and a rather good film. Though it would be chockful of explicit sex, it really would be incidental to the story.
Now here are the problems: I have the film equipment to shoot it on 16mm; but I don’t know who would process the footage. The usual place I use won’t process nudity, let alone hardcore sex. It would be expensive. My friend’s first feature-length film cost about $40,000. That’s incredibly cheap, but I don’t have that kind of disposable income. The vampire film would require some elaborate sets, which would be expensive.
You could save money by shooting on video, but video doesn’t look as good as film.
Then there’s distribution. Making a film is easy compared to finding a distributor. To get the film into one of the few cinemas that show such features, it would have to be blown up to 35mm (expensive – and shot-on-video would have to be converted too). (It could also be shot on 35mm, which would add about 50% to the cost of production and would require renting of 35mm cameras.) And it seems to me that with so few X-cinemas it would be difficult to find one to show the film in the first place. Of course, there are distributors. They’ll screw you for every cent they can. You may find yourself contractually boud to a distributor who doesn’t try very hard to sell your product.
And again, only a small segment of porn viewers would care. They just want to see fucking.