Porn Valley- With certain exceptions, the porn documentary has been this ongoing kiss of death proposition. I know because I used to see the whole dead man walking vibe in play all the time. Oh boy, another porn documentary. Can’t wait. The porn documentary was porn’s black hole of Calcutta. Bore me to death projects came, bore me to death projects went, few were actually ever seen, and a lack of interest pretty much took care of the rest. Every time I’d turn around there was a new documentary being shot, or being hyped, or being pitched.
Why most of these attempted looks at porn failed or just got lost in the shuffle are probably stories you could, well, devote a website to. But there are also the exceptions as well. Like the Johnny Wadd documentary about John Holmes- a highly controversial subject made more explosive by Holmes’ ambiguous pulp fiction lifestyle. It’s really good stuff, and it didn’t hurt to have solid writing and a colorful cast of characters assembled together to spin gripping post mortem Holmes yarns and anecdotes, either.
Whereas the marvelous Holmes documentary assesses the man, Inside Deep Throat, www.xxxdeepthroat.com, the newest docu on the block, looks at an era in an attempt to assess how a mob-financed movie about cocksucking manages to become the most summoned motif of a generation devoted to thumbing your nose at authority. Let me guess. Lavish cocksucking, disco production values, Sammy Davis Jr., government raids, Nixon and the mob being the operative words here.
And then you have the documentary Desperately Seeking Seka, far less lavish in scope than either Wadd or Inside Deep Throat, but pretty good, just the same, at rinsing the nostalgia washcloth. Hey, and the subject is still alive with a heartbeat which is a pretty good plus, though I can’t say the same for some of the other participants involved in this venture. But we’ll get to that.
Desperately Seeking Seka, which is being released this week from The Disinformation Company, is really Seka finally coming to grips with being interviewed. Seka, over the years, at least from some of the fireside chats I’ve heard in the past, never seemed to get the hang of smooth, Seka coming off at times stiff, like Martha Stewart, in the context of surly Wall Street interrogatories. Oddly enough, it’s when Seka is allowed to stretch out in a casual home making capacity, making tomato sauce or something like that, that she comes off as this really, cool middle aged chick who just happens to have a neat past and some wonderful porn memories to dispense.
This comes later after something of a bloated overture which prompts the inevitable question about why the documentary couldn’t have just gotten to the matter at hand much sooner. What? And miss the fact that it runs us around the country on this coy, hopscotch Seka journey, first to the AEE show in Las Vegas, then to Los Angeles, with little airplanes buzzing over little map routes. A series of interviews with porn stars in Vegas begs the words, why, why, why. Almost infomercial style, Serenity gets an opportunity to flog some of her Las Vegas Novelties line, but Serenity has no discernible Seka story to tell. Ashlyn Gere has an opportunity to name drop Jet Li and reminisce about her horror film and X Files careers such as they were.
Nina Hartley states that there are a lot of pretty girls in porn and that they’re a dime a dozen. In Hartley’s day they may have gone for a nickel, but she confesses that she doesn’t know Seka very well- the same credentials I’m going to use to talk myself onscreen for the Jose Canseco documentary. Hartley also mentions that Seka wasn’t interested in her during Careful He May Be Watching. “She really likes men.” Hartley suspects that Seka left the business because there’s only really so much bullshit to it that you can handle.
Randy West’s Seka recollections are nearly as embarrassing for lack of substance and Peter North can only relate to a still shoot they did one time. Al Goldstein gets the opportunity to state that porn is diluted with shitty product.
story in progress