Ron Silver has been on many film sets in his career, but he saw something different at one this summer: The actors were having sex. Real sex. On camera. And what struck him was the nonchalance of those involved. “It seems like you become inured to it after a while,” the actor says. “There are guys on the crew doing crossword puzzles while somebody’s having oral sex.”
Silver was visiting the set of an adult film, doing what he laughingly calls “due diligence” to prepare for his role in Skin, Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest TV series.

Network viewers won’t get to see what Silver saw, of course. But they will see him star as an adult-entertainment mogul on the new Fox drama, premiering Monday (9 p.m. ET/PT).

The show is the latest of a wave of mainstream projects on TV and film and in books, peeling back the plain brown wrapper from the world of pornography. Not too much, mind you, to turn off middle America, but just enough to peep into the neon glow of a culture that has long operated on the edges of entertainment.

Cop shows use porn as a salacious plotline -NYPD Blue did so just this week. Comedies such as Coupling and Hidden Hills joke about porn buddies and Internet porn moms. Pay-cable channels have offered plenty of sex-oriented shows. But Skin, a Romeo-and-Juliet love story between the son of a district attorney and the daughter of a porn king, makes the X-rated trade central to a prime-time network series.

The film Wonderland, chronicling the post-porn downfall of John Holmes, expands nationally today after doing well in limited release. And other projects promise up-close-and-sexual looks at the industry and its insiders:

• HBO’s six-part documentary Pornucopia: Going Down in the Valley examines the workings of the porn biz, centered not far from Hollywood in suburban Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. The series is scheduled to air next year.

• The documentary Inside Deep Throat, being produced by Brian Grazer and World of Wonder’s Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), looks at the cultural influence of the theatrical porn blockbuster. And Porno Valley, a documentary/reality series about adult film company Vivid Entertainment, is being produced by Bailey and Barbato. A U.S. TV deal is being lined up.

• The Showtime series Family Business, following the professional and personal life of porn star and single father Adam Glasser, begins its second season in early 2004.

•The Girl Next Door, who has a surprise for the boy who falls for her – she’s a former porn star – is a film due from Regency and 20th Century Fox in March.

• A sex-advice book by the Vivid Girls, the company’s stars, is due in January from ReganBooks, a HarperCollins imprint that has a history of spotting pop-culture waves. And porn queen Jenna Jameson has her own book, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, due from ReganBooks in May.

Jameson may come closest yet to crossing over to the mainstream. She appears on the cover of New York magazine this week, and an E! True Hollywood Story profile in August ranks No. 3 in viewers for the year for the series.

• In a porn/reality TV mix, Can You Be a Porn Star, planned by Silhouette Productions for January pay-per-view, will feature a group of adult-film wannabes competing for a contract through tests of their skills. Viewers pick the winner.

“There seems to be something, the zeitgeist, with Wonderland and some of the things going on,” says Skin executive producer Jim Leonard. “I think people are increasingly aware of (the porn business) because of the Internet and the universality of cable and satellite.”

Despite the increasing number of projects, Hollywood is as ambivalent as ever toward porn, perhaps reflecting a public that expresses disdain for the X-rated trade but still spends billions on it.

And the public hasn’t always responded to mainstream projects that highlight the sex business. Boogie Nights, which portrayed a so-called golden era of porn in the 1970s, was a lackluster box office draw despite critical praise.

Barbato sees a contrast between the porno chic of the 1970s, when Deep Throat filled theaters, and the popularity of the genre today.

“It was the culmination of the sexual revolution. Mom and Dad were going to porno theaters,” he says. “Today, porn seems everywhere, but it still seems closeted. It’s like private access.”

The other difference? Social chic is out; the bottom line is in, he says. “Big boobs equal big dollars.”

Estimates of annual revenue for adult entertainment – porn film sales and rentals, Web site subscriptions and fees, and so on – range from $8 billion to $10 billion, though figures are difficult to verify. Major cable companies and hotel chains pocket some of that loot, a point that Skin will make. Adult Video News, a trade publication, reported $4.04 billion in film sales and rentals last year.

For Skin, the connection to a renegade industry is an alluring double-edged sword. It brings the extra attention a new series covets but could easily overshadow the core drama. “That’s a bit of a concern,” Skin’s Leonard says. “We don’t want to be known as the porn show.”

Most programs dealing with or referring to X-rated material to date have been on cable networks, which can tailor it to a narrower audience. Even though they don’t show the hard-core content itself, those appearances grant a seal of approval, Parents Television Council president Brent Bozell says.

“It’s troubling, because it is part of this moral relativism where everything is OK,” he says, taking aim at networks such as E! and VH1 that have spotlighted porn stars or their connection to popular music. “These shows are directed at young people, and they’re saying it is perfectly acceptable to be a porn queen,” Bozell says.

Increasing depictions of the adult business suggest that society’s discomfort has softened, especially among highly valued younger consumers. “There’s less of a taboo to admit that one views porn,” says Vanderbilt University professor Paul Young, who studies how movies depict other media.

Technology has made pornography easier and less embarrassing to obtain. “It’s not just 100 guys in raincoats in (an adult) bookstore,” says Family Business’ Glasser, a producer/director/actor whose nom de porn is Seymore Butts. He says business on his Web site has jumped more than 40% since the show’s premiere.

Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough Is Enough, a group trying to protect children from unsuitable material, says X-rated filmmakers are using public relations techniques to spruce up their image. “The porn industry has been attempting to become accepted more and more as mainstream. It now refers to itself as the adult industry,” says Rice Hughes. But “this isn’t adult. This is the porn industry. So let’s call it what it is.”

Indeed, industry execs see the benefits to media attention. Vivid co-founder Steven Hirsch says opening his company to documentarians Bailey and Barbato is worth it, despite the risk that the flaws won’t be airbrushed. “The ultimate payoff is we’re able to get our product and name out to millions of people for brand recognition,” Hirsch says. Vivid licenses action figures of its actresses, and Sims brand snowboards feature their images – scantily clad, or nude if the buyer is over 18.

Despite the higher profile of the business and Jameson’s success, Adult Video News owner Paul Fishbein doesn’t see the likelihood that porn stars will go mainstream with any regularity. “Jenna is everywhere and she’s great, but she’s one in a million,” Fishbein says.

Skin producer Leonard sees much drama to mine in the conflict between First Amendment rights and parents’ desire to shield children from pornographic material. Skin’s porn king, Larry Goldman (Ron Silver), touts his product as legal entertainment for adults; his antagonist, District Attorney Thomas Roam (Kevin Anderson), targets pornography as filth and a peril to children.

“Most writers are in favor of free speech. But as soon as you have children, your first instinct is to protect them,” says Leonard, father of two teen boys. “I think we’re at a cultural crossroads.”

For all the buzz of the X-rated theme, Skin is mostly tell, not show. The most suggestive element of the premiere is busty models – including a real-life porn star or two – doffing their lingerie on a boardroom table, no nudity or sex shown. There’s more sexual contact between the two teens.

Silver found the porn stars (“Everyone in the industry is a star,” he says, “there don’t seem to be any bit players”) friendly, accessible and comfortable with their sexuality. At a lunch meeting, one actress discussed her “won’t-do list” of off-limits sex acts. “I was choking on my hamburger,” he says.

Skin will attempt to sate viewers’ interest in how the sex business operates, Silver says. “They’re curious about what kind of people are in the business, how they’re attracted to it, how it really works.”

Vivid’s Hirsch says the reality, at least on the business side, is much tamer than the fantasy. “Some people think there are orgies going on at all these adult companies and that there are naked girls running around all day. When you actually come into one, it’s just a business. ”

Fishbein says that, even with the increased interest in the business, porn likely will never fully cross over to mainstream acceptance. That may be just as well: “I guess if it was all out there and nobody cared about it or was against it, it would cease to be special.”