Charlie Productions : What you filming? Blue movies?

There is no way round it. Film, in the eyes of the mass of the population, is inescapably seedy. Somewhere in the Jungian subconcious even the big budget end of the spectrum, with its shining multiplexs and family friendly environment is nothing but a cover for a seedy and depraved off-screen world. Here fat old men with misted up glasses sit in darkened rooms with sweaty palms whilst all too eager hopeful starlets cross and uncross their legs like some form of sexual semaphore. This is the world of hedonistic wrap parties, casting couches and Don Johnson desperately hoovering everything and anything he can find up his nose. The product that hits the screens may be clean and sun soaked but everyone knows that it is only once the camera stops rolling that the dear little Drew Barrymore's of this world show what they're really made of. Take away the big budget need to appeal to respectablity and the family audience and, presumes the average person, you enter a world where scarcely a moment goes by without someone or something being violently fucked in front of the camera and probably behind it, below it and above it as well. In short - cinema is sex.

Even my closest friends, when they ask "So, what are you doing these days?", look at me with that momentary raised eyebrow glance that contains both condemnation and deep envy as I say "Oh I'm making films". "Oh really?" They say, eyebrows still arched "T and A?" they say, and then laugh desperately trying to shake from their minds the image of me and my brother and our trusty Cannon XL1 poised over the never flagging buttocks of two flaxen haired hussies. "Can I have a part?" they say. If they are men.

[not porn from danny's found jesus]

It is the first question I am asked by anybody I approach when trying to gain permission to film somewhere. The wording ranges from "So - ah - what - ah - sort of - ah - film - is this exactly?" to "There's nothing - I mean we'd need to see a copy of the script or whatever first obviously - but I mean - there's nothing - is there?" but the meaning remains (to quote Lady Chatterly) "Tell me it's not just fucking." Even the London Underground asked me this! What were they thinking for God's sake? Did they think I'd say "Yeah we're basically you know, I mean it's porn. The main character - she has this thing about being fisted by tramps and so, yeah, it's pretty hard core" I mean, like I'd ASK THEM IF THAT'S WHAT I WAS DOING! Thinking about it they'd probably just have said "I'm sorry, there are no tramps on the Underground, she'll have to be fisted by passengers, sorry, I mean customers".

"Oh really?" They say, eyebrows still arched..."Can I have a part?" they say. If they are men.
It NEVER seems to occur to people that I might have some sort of self respect. Equally it NEVER occours that if I wanted to shoot porn I would already have crossed that line where asking permission is no longer an issue. Did nice Barbara in the Savacenta really imagine that I would seriously waste her time by bothering to ask if I and my mates could film some guys fucking in the freezer department? "Hallo is that the Savacenta, yeah, we're making a film called "Supermarket Slappers" and I was wondering if you'd mind us spraying gisum over the fruit and veg...."

But it doesn't stop when you've convinced the authorities that you are fine decent upstanding artists making art and that if this gets broadcast it won't be on Channel 5 (a joke for readers in England. no actually a joke for readers in only very specific parts of England). Almost without fail whilst on a shoot someone will walk past the camera and mutter to their friend "I bet they're shooting a porno". The immortal line "what you filming? Blue movies?" was actually uttered by a pair of archtypal dirty old men who turned up at the flat where we were shooting "cold" on the pretence that they were looking round with a view to renting it once we'd gone. They stayed for about quater of an hour until finally they had convinced themselfs that there were no naked girls in the cupboards, or in the bath, or under the sofa and no they would not be invited to take part in the "action". Talking to the estate agent afterwards we found he had no idea who they were.

[not pornography from good morning, who are you?]

So why is it that moving images and masturbation seem destined to be inextricably linked forever more? Indeed why have they been so linked since the start - afterall amongst the earliest moving images ever captured by a camera are bunches of naughty naked lumpy ladies cavorting around in fields pretending to be nymphs. May be there is something fundamentally pornographic about film making. Is the vicarious enjoyment of seeing two guys chase each other through the streets of San Fransico in cool cars really all that different from watching two people fucking like pigs in a ditch? In both cases the enjoyment of the experience of watching comes partly from a feeling of being sucked into a reality that is differant from your own and partly from voyeristically peeking into that different reality. Most of the things that turn people on in porn films would either be utterly laughable or simply unpleasant if they happened to those same people in real life. What they enjoy about the experience of watching it all is the pleasure of being able to take part without actually having all the messy business of actually taking part. The same could be said of a car chase, or a gun fight, or hell any film. I mean you wouldn't actually want to live in a world like "She's All That" any more than you'd like your loved one to urinate all over you. Thinking about it it's hard to work out which of those I'd particularly enjoy watching either but you get my general drift.

	"...She has this thing about being fisted by tramps ... they'd probably just have said "I'm sorry, there are no tramps on the Underground, she'll have to be fisted by passengers, sorry, I mean customers"..."
not porn from "Free Speech"

All stories contain an element game playing. A child psychologist who cornered me at a party once babbled on for hours about how kids play games in order to experience dangerous real life events in a safe environment, like puppies fighting playfully or something. She then went on to talk in great length about how the game "What's the Time Mr.Wolf" has always acted as an incredible turn-on for her ever since the age of seven. Fearing a night spent standing facing the wall trying to simultaneously think of random times of the clock and maintain an erection I extricated myself from the situation using the not too subtle, if effective, ploy of offering to buy her a drink and then leaving her to go to a differant pub to do so. However there could well be something of her first point in the human love of story telling, which would of course make porn films simply a compelling example of this with a very simple plot line.

Alternatively porn films could just be thoughtless pieces of trash for teenagers to get their rocks off on.

Yes I know all about how porn serves a useful function for the disabled and those unable to find sexual satisfaction in other ways for all sorts of perfectly valid medical and psychological reasons but come on do you really think that they account for the bulk of the mulit-billion dollar market for porn? Do you really think that the San Ferdinando valley is simply the biggest disabled rights movement in history?

I think that in truth the reason that everyone thinks that film making is rather seedy and full of sex is for two reasons.

1. They don't make films and so assume it must be more fun than working in the local pizza express out of natural human envy.
2. Films attract exhibitionists and exhibitionists, whilst not necessarily having wilder sex lives than the rest of us, talk about their sex lives in loud voices at boring parties and so try to convince everyone, themselfs included, that they do have wilder sex lives than the rest of us.

Our friend Duncan once decided that we should make a porn film (and I think he probably offered to be in it). He had the clever ruse of basing the film around Cluedo. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the script otherwise I'd put it in here (as the actress said to the bishop) because it was really rather funny.

The main problem that you will probably come across (ho ho) when trying to make a low budget porn film is that your cast will consist of young men wanting to sleep with young women and no one else. Surprisingly enough it is unlikely you will find large numbers of disabled people rushing to take part shouting:

"No no please this I want to exercise my human right to come into a tissue!"

not porn from "old man dies"

Charlie Productions believe passionately in doing things and always trying to stop in time for tea.
Brook House Design Studios, Bluebridge Road, Brookmans Park, Herts AL9 7SX
admin | sitemap | fresh look media