It’s legal in California to make porn movies, but prostitution is still illegal there.
So, what’s stopping someone from setting up a legit business where customers pay to be an actor/actress for a day? The “crew” would be salaried employees of the company.
At the end of the day, you get to take your movie home, etc.
That’s a damn good question.
Because many guys don’t work well in a crowd. Many moons ago, I read about this limiting the number of male actors. As good as they thought they were and would be, on a set with directors barking orders, cameramen moving into ‘interesting’ angles and sound men getting mikes into position, many men failed to give even an adequate performance. Also, actors get paid, they don’t pay, and films are supposed to be distributed. Lastly, because I would be very suspicious* of others making tapes. I wouldn’t want to show up on any unlinkable websites for someone else’s amusement, and I don’t think I could get comfortable that I got every copy of the film.
*I would be if I were a john, which I have never been and as of this moment in time, have no aspirations of ever becoming
I think you’ve found a good loophole.
It would be made better if the ‘customer/actor’ signed a contract for production/distribution of said ‘movie’.
And would you really need a crew?
One person could do all that is needed.
I’d guess the profit margin for pornography is substantially higher than for prostitution. – But that’s just a guess.
3 problems:
Too pricey - you need at least one additional person to roll tape, move cameras, etc. Lots of equipment overhead costs.
Most guys wouldn’t want the tape. They want a quickie, not instant grounds for divorce sitting on their shelf. Or possible blackmail evidence sitting on YOUR shelf.
Not enough mobility. Let’s face it, even if a court eventually finds in your favor, once you appear on the police radar they’re going to be busting you, and confiscating equipment. You’ll need a good lawyer, and plenty of backup gear (anything confiscated is going to be unavailable for awhile even if you eventually get it back). All this, of course, contributes to the priciness, but with what amounts to a permanent studio, you’re a sitting target for the local cops.
What I can’t be an actor and producer? 
Attach it to a mail order porn movie business and you JUST MIGHT have your loophole.
Throw up a website selling your movies on DVD with simple cover art, and catchy titles like:
Drach does Cyn: First Contact
Drach does Cyn II: The Undiscovered Country
Drach does Cyn III: The Search for Spock :eek:
I’m googling for a place to build my studio now
I think a deciding legal distinction between porn and prostitution is that the actors are being paid, and not paying. If the leading man has to pay, that might make it illegal.
This Cornell Site had good links to the criminal codes for all states, which led me to this site, which lists the California penal code.
I was going to wade through it, but I’m not up to the task right now. My instinct tells me that they could nail you on obscenity charges or find something that would make the scheme infeasible.
First thing: You need a XXX film permit… Like they would give you one after reading your script 
Witht he wonderful world of digital video cameras and relatively inexpensive video editing and duplication I bet you could assemble something on $5,000. Depending on how much you charge to make the movies that might not be such a big deal. Especially if your $995 package includes several short “shoots” :dubious: over several days. Takes time to rearrange the sets and check the composition of the shots you know. 
I’m not a lawyer, but common sense would tell me that they’d call it prostitution. How many porn actors pay to be in the movie?
Porn Actor - Gets Paid
Prostitute User - Pays
Forget editing, sound men, etc. Just get a camera on a tripod, aimed at the bed. Pop a tape in, press REC, and start “acting.” Then you pop the tape out when you’re done. Instant movie.
Because you posted an explanation of your intentions on the internet. Sorry. Good idea, though.
While I am a lawyer, I am not a lawyer in California.
That said, my strong instict is that PetW is on track.
As a general thing, law enforcement agencies tend to take a dim view of people who try to find “cute” exceptions to a rule.
During the (probably bogus) gas shortage of the late 1970s a gas station operator in Illinois decided he had a way around anti-gouging laws. He gave his gas away for “free”. To get a fill-up gas, however, you had to buy one of the blank will forms he had bought from a stationery store. The form, naturally, went for significantly more than the then-legal price for a tank of gasoline. The reaction of the feds was that this was so funny they forgot to llaugh. He was shut down quite promptly.
The short answer as to why it probably wouldn’t work is that the police and the courts could see what you were really doing. As Dr. Bergen Evans once said, paraphrasing Dickens, “(t)he law is not wholly an ass.”
There may be jurisdictions in California which would let you get away with this, but they are the ones which tolerate prostitution anyway.
There are jurisdictions like that around the country. I know a woman who ran away from home at the age of 14. She promptly developed a drug problem, and for more than a year she lived as an exotic dancer and prostitute in southern California. She said the police let the business which exploited her operate under a “consenting adult” law. Imagine that: only 14 and addicted to speed and she was already a consenting adult…
Although, another way around it, is that it might be legal to “hire” an “actress” to “pose” with you in pornographic photography. This would be cheaper, and seems less like prostitution (even cuts out the pimp-middleman!), but, like slipster said, the po might not think it’s that funny of a loophole.
D-odds, huh?
whyt are you talking about directors interfering with the male’s performance. HE wasn’t thinking of REALLY making movies. Just taping men with the hookers to make it “legal”.
I would tend to think there is a fine but perceptible line between porn producer and prostitute client.
What if your payment is comission based from sales of the produced video? Then if you got paid too you would be just as “paid” as the actors/actresses.
Granted I know the OP is looking for a front for prostitution. I’m sure someone with the inclination could make a business work that was capable of being abused as a brothel of sorts but could run as a legit porn studio as well.
Ah… BUT… if there was payment by the male “performer” rather than TO him – it’s obvious prostitution and it’s illegal. Otherwise, if he performs for free, guess what… that’s not “a front for prostitution”, in the OP sense. It’s “amateur porn”. Legal, but you don’t make back the investment unless you actually sell the tapes. And a halfway-intelligent jury would see through lame attempts at theoretically “offering for sale” the tape in such a way the “amateur star” is the one who pays for it.
I remember seeing a TV investigative-journalism-type expose on the porn industry. One of the segments featured a guy who didn’t charge others to star in porn movies, but he was the male “star” himself. Thus, he got to have sex with girls under some guise of legitimate “freedom of expression” under whatever definition made porn ok expression in his neighborhood. It looked like he had a pretty cheap-o set-up, basically as toadspittle explains above: One videocamera, pointed at bed; he pressed record and then joined the day’s “star” on the bed. I recall him telling the reporter that he had some first-amendment protection to produce porn just like anyone else; what exactly he did or had to do to attempt to sell or distribute the tapes to make it officially “free expression” and not just “taping oneself having sex with a prostitute,” I don’t recall – a film permit perhaps?
Of course, he wound up paying the young ladies significantly more than he would have paid on the street for similar services, but I guess he got some peace of mind from the supposed legality of his approach.