‘Shooting Porn’ Goes Behind the Videos

Strictly for adults, Ronnie Larsen’s “Shooting Porn” is a forthright, funny, occasionally graphic and ultimately serious and comprehensive look at the world of gay porn video-making. Having written the popular satirical play “Making Porn,” Larsen now takes us onto the sets of two top porn video-makers, Gino Colbert and Chi Chi La Rue, and interviews their stars and many others involved in the industry.

Colbert and La Rue are both veteran professionals. On the set, they are supportive but no-nonsense; La Rue says he is amazed that anyone would believe he’d wear drag to work. (At parties and personal appearances, La Rue always appears in drag, resembling a younger, better-looking Divine. Without drag, he says, “I’d be just a fat boy standing in the corner.”) Key among the actors are Blue Blake and Hunter Thompson, both popular stars and possessed of a formidable sense of humor, especially about themselves.

“Shooting Porn” is often outrageous and sometimes hilarious. There are moments when some audiences might wish Larsen had not been quite so candid about all the clinical aspects of preparing for a sex scene, but he presents porn actors as human beings, not merely the objects of carefully calculated sex fantasies.

Most of the actors admit to a certain uneasiness at the outset of their careers but clearly lose their inhibitions swiftly. Not surprisingly, they are all good-looking and in shape, but they also seem to have acquired a certain detachment about themselves and what they’re doing, something essential to success and survival in most endeavors but absolutely crucial in the transitory world of porn.

Larsen makes clear why resilience is so important in pointing out the realities that porn actors have to deal with--like having to decide whether or not to tell your parents what you’re doing for a living, for starters. (The consensus: Tell them before they find out.)

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Then there’s the issue of sexual orientation, since a number of the most famous stars in gay porn claim to be straight. These so-called “gay for pay” actors are sometimes derided by openly gay actors. (The consensus: It’s not possible for any totally straight actor to function in porn). Self-proclaimed straight men, however, are attracted to gay porn because they are treated with more respect and earn more money than in straight porn. (The only thing the men of porn apparently are coy about is their earnings, and how they report it on their income tax returns.)

“Shooting Porn” goes for a humorous, light touch, but Larsen is too smart not to overlook the dark side of porn--the way in which some young men self-destruct on the fast track. The classic example is Joey Stefano, a handsome young man who died of a drug overdose in a seedy Hollywood motel room at the age of 26. Stefano was also HIV-positive, which raises the specter of AIDS in porn.

While Stefano is described by many as a troubled, vulnerable individual, La Rue’s remark that in regard to Stefano’s death “the industry had nothing to do with it” seems a bit disingenuous. Although safe--or rather safer--sex is nowadays the rule in gay porn, Larsen does not make mention of the huge toll AIDS has exacted on porn actors of previous decades.

In his apt concluding remarks to “Shooting Porn,” critic David Widmer, citing the outpouring of grief over Stefano’s death, wonders whether porn actors realize how much they mean to legions of lonely gay men, especially those who are isolated in small, remote towns.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: Some sex and nudity, much blunt sexual candor, strictly adult fare.

‘Shooting Porn’

A Caryn Horwitz presentation. Director Ronnie Larsen. Producer Caryn Horwitz. Cinematographer Bruce McCarthy. Additional cinematography Eileen Schreiber. Editor James Lyons. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 848-3500.