This Is Hardcore

In a swelteringly hot Budape#st movie studio, situated by the banks of the River Danube just twenty minutes drive from the centre of the Hungarian capital, a beautiful flame-haired young actress named Juliana is painting a picture. Well, pretending to paint a picture at least, though her obviously mimed and rather erratic slash and dab method of applying dry paint to dry paint wouldn t really fool anybody looking closely enough. Not that anyone would bother paying too much attention to her less than impeccable brushwork, mind. What she s doing away from the easel is far more interesting than watching dry paint go drier.
You see, aside from her impossibly high stilettos and a pair of skimpy black lace knickers that would barely cover a Barbie doll s crotch, let alone a fully grown woman s, Juliana is completely naked. Not only that, she s also masturbating with her one free hand as she pretends to paint with the other slowly caressing her perfectly formed breasts and occasionally slipping her fingers down the front of her postage-stamp sized panties. When they come out wet and shiny, she moistens a nipple before shoving her breast up to her mouth and licking it. And, when she s not doing that, she s simulating oral sex, hungrily fellating the thick end of her paintbrush.
Ummmmm . . . mmmmmm, she moans between heavy breaths, softly at first but soon she s screaming loudly enough to wake the dead (or at least the deaf). MMMMMM . . . MMMMMMMM . . . OH . . . OH . . . MMMMMMMMMMM!!!
The obviously old and somewhat amateurish water-colour on the canvas in front of her depicts a rather crudely painted naked couple locked in a passionate embrace. The real life couple in front of her easel are also naked and passionately embracing but there the resemblance ends. Their pose is more of a stiff life than a still life. The guy s in his early thirties and handsome in an Alpha male kind of way, the girl s in her early twenties and beautiful in a sex kittenish kind of way, and their passionate embraces are, well, extremely passionate and pretty much all embracing. Over the last ninety minutes or so, they ve performed fellatio, cunnilingus, analingus and just about every other kind of lingus you can think of on each other.
Right now, however, they re fucking doggy style on a four-poster bed and making at least as much noise as Juliana as they do it. The girl is screaming the only words of English she knows ( OOH FUCK ME FUCK ME FUCK ME HARDER BABY ) as the guy thrusts himself into her with ever increasing force, dripping rivers of sweat and grunting like a wild animal as he does so: UGH . . . UGH . . . UGH . . . UGH . . . UGHHH!!!!!
Things are getting pretty noisy, what with the wet and sloppy sounds of flesh furiously slapping against flesh and the three of them screaming in unbridled ecstasy, when suddenly a heavily accented Italian voice shouts CUT! and everybody immediately stops what they re doing and looks up. The guy turns his head and shrugs his shoulders as if to say what s wrong? and another voice with a different accent Dutch, this time calls out: Olaf, you re blowing smoke into the bloody shot! Move back a bit!
Oops sorry! I call back from where I m standing, just a few feet away from the bed, and quickly stub out the offending cigarette. The smoke clears in seconds, the Italian voice calls ACTION! and everybody immediately goes back to what they were doing. Which is to say: Juliana goes back to masturbating and moaning, the couple on the bed go back to fucking and screaming, the fifteen or so people behind them go back to filming and watching, and I go back to absentmindedly wondering what kind of dinner they serve on the set of a porno movie.
I m just hoping it won t be meat and two veg . . .

You go through a number of different stages
in your head when you re watching hardcore pornography (or hard erotica as its makers like to call it) being filmed. At first you re somewhat nervous but still slightly turned on, erotically charged in a voyeuristic kind of way at observing such private acts so publicly displayed. Then, after a while, you re amused and slightly embarrassed the same way you are when you see dogs fucking in the park. Pretty soon, usually just after the gaudily coloured dildos, vibrators and other sex toys come out, Catholic guilt (or whatever you ve been had by yourself) tries to have its wicked way with you and you become slightly appalled at the shamelessness of it all naked people are fine but naked people sticking things (other than naked parts of themselves) into other naked people can be a bit hard to take. Slightly obscene, even.
Once you get over that, however, you become curious in an almost scientific way it all becomes biology and gynaecology. You stare nonchalantly at erect penises, cum-covered breasts and wide open vaginas with a peculiarly non-sexual interest, mentally noting lengths, widths, depths and colours. You compare and contrast. You watch acts of oral and anal sex with complete detachment. By now, you already know you won t be going home with your hard on. And then eventually you become completely bored and sexually, at least the whole thing just becomes one long petit mort.
Until you take a break from it all for a while, that is. Then you start the whole pornographic process all over again.

It s 3.30 in the afternoon on the first day s shooting of Devil In The Flesh the second feature length movie by Italian hardcore director Antonio Adamo and my mid-coital cigarette has just interrupted the second of three scenes that they hope to get in the can today. Not that it matters a great deal or that anyone s particularly pissed off with me. The average twelve minute scene in a porno-flick takes at least four to six hours to shoot and coitus-interruptus is a regular occurrence. A fact of life when you re filming the facts of life. People step into shots, equipment fails, vaginas start to fart air uncontrollably whatever the reason, an uninterrupted five minutes straight filming is a rarity.
I ve been on the set since 9am this morning and, having witnessed the shooting of the entire first scene straight one on one boy/girl sex from start to semen, am already pretty bored with the whole thing, and entering the petit mort stage for the second time. Though perhaps bored isn t quite the right word. I m actually more numbed by the experience, stoned on sex and totally unsure what I should be thinking or feeling. Adding to my discomfort is the fact that I don t really have anything to do, other than just stand, watch and try not to blow my smoke in the wrong direction. Of the twenty or so people on the set, I m probably the only person without any real reason to be here, so I m basically just hanging around like, well, a spare prick.

The actors have been here all morning as well but I haven t yet worked up the nerve to properly approach them. Actually, I have approached them, but I quickly discovered that it s quite hard to have a normal conversation with someone while they re busily playing with themselves. The male actor is a famous Hungarian porn star called Frank Gun, a veteran of more than sixty hardcore movies basically a real life European version of Boogie Night s Dirk Diggler. He was already in costume (i.e. naked) when I was introduced to him this morning. This I could just about handle. However, once we d shaken hands and started a rather stilted conversation about Dublin, he suddenly spat into his palm and began vigorously rubbing his cock, seemingly oblivious to the look of absolute horror on my face. I beat a hasty retreat and left him to beat off (something he would continue to do for the rest of the day, maintaining the same erection for hours).
I had no better luck with the girls either. Juliana, Eva and Betty the three stunning twentysomething starlets were friendly, cheerful and welcoming, and seemed happy enough to chat away in broken English, asking me about Ireland and telling me about the live shows they did and other movies they had worked on. Unfortunately, they were all busy rubbing baby oil onto their vaginas while they spoke and keeping my eyes above waist level eventually proved to be too much of a challenge. Once they took their tops off and began applying the oil to their breasts, I mumbled an excuse and went out and watched the Danube flow past for a while. I wasn t turned on, I was just embarrassed (okay, maybe I was a little turned on). By the time I d got it together to go back and talk to them they had already started work and I d missed my chance.
Once shooting starts, everybody gets busy. The lighting guys light, the cameramen film and the actors have sex more or less non-stop. On a normal film set, people have lines to fuck up. Here, the only way the actors can fuck up is if they stop fucking. So they don t. The main camera is hand-held and is operated by Adamo himself, a tall, tanned and rather stern looking forty-something who hovers around the actors like an insect around rotting fruit, practically caressing their bodies with the lens and getting about as up-close and personal as it s possible to get without sticking the camera up someone s bum. Two other cameramen rotate around him one filming on video, the other filming for the DVD version of the film (which will offer viewers their choice of different angles).
Behind them, Arie Van Damme, the Video Production Co-ordinator, shoots on a back-up camera. Add the boom operator, female translator (who crouches by the couple translating the director s instructions for the non-Italian speaking Hungarian actress), make-up girls and stills-photographer, and you ve got a pretty busy bed. Ironically enough, all of these people work for a company called Private.
So the actors fuck, the crew film and I watch. It seems to take forever. CUT! ACTION! CUT! ACTION! Every time there s a break in filming, the actors hold their pose and the Private photographer zooms in and takes a few close-up stills. These will be used for the cover of the video and the advertising posters, but will also be available on the Internet and in various porn magazines. Not one blowjob, penetration or position goes unrecorded, not a single drop of semen goes to waste.
More often than not the breaks between filming are pretty short so, even if the photographer has finished, the actors usually continue to slowly fuck while they wait for things to get going again. The only difference being that when they re screwing without being filmed, they don t make any noise. They just seem to chat and giggle, all the time rocking to a slow and steady rhythm.
Then Adamo calls ACTION! and suddenly they re back in the throes of ecstasy again: MMMMMM . . . UGH . . . UGH . . . FUCK ME BABY . . . UGH . . . Meg Ryan s faked orgasm in When Harry Met Sally just doesn t even begin to compare. Then again, these are professionals.
After what seems like an eternity, Adamo finally has every conceivable angle covered and announces that he s ready for the all-important cum shot. Juliana who had moved from the canvas to the bed and briefly joined the copulating couple, steps back out of the shot (but continues rubbing herself in the background), while Eva goes down on Frank Gun and sucks him off for a minute or two. When Frank signals that he s ready, the translator orders her to look at the camera and UGHHHH!! comes noisily and voluminously, spurting streaky white Halley s comets of semen into her mouth and over her hair and face. When she eventually pulls back, she smiles, licks her lips and as per the director s instructions stares into the lens for a few moments longer than necessary, straight into the faces of the millions of viewers who will eventually see this movie, subliminally telling them that she wishes it was their cum in her hair, their cocks in her mouth. Or maybe not so subliminally. This is hardcore, after all.
CUT!! Adamo shouts.
Cue huge sighs of relief all around (in fact, mine is louder than Juliana s had been earlier). Five hours after they started filming it, Scene Two the two girl/one boy threesome is finally in the can. It took a long time coming. Or at least Frank Gun did. But his work is now done here and, following another quick photo-session, he s off to the dressing room within moments. Before he departs the set on his motorbike, I get a chance to ask him does he use anything to help maintain an erection for so long. I don t need Viagra or anything like that, he smiles, I ve always been able to do it.
And what kind of safety catch does Frank Gun use on his, erm, gun in order to avoid ejaculating before time?
I just think about anything but what I m actually doing, he laughs. You know, the same way any man does when he s fucking a woman. I think about football or movies or bikes or whatever. I just have to do it for longer. But I ve had a lot of practice.
Do you like your job? I ask.
Frank Gun grins a grin wider than even his co-star s legs, guns his engine (the one on his brand new Harley Davidson), laughs loudly and peels off in a cloud of dust.
I guess that means yes .

Pornography is a thoroughly dirty business cheap, nasty and degrading to women. The girls involved are treated badly and completely exploited, the men are opportunistic misogynists and little better than pimps. Not so, according to Private s Arie Van Damme, though he is quick to distance himself from most of the rest of the crew ( They re all perverts, he smiles, not like me this is just a job for me! ). Forty years of age, trim, bearded and extremely well-mannered, the eminently likeable Van Damme a former Amsterdam cop, as it happens has only been working for Private since 1997 and insists that the company runs a respectable operation.
I m not saying that there s no exploitation within the business, but we do it the proper way the normal way, I think, he says. We try to treat the girls and boys right. You know, we pay them right, much more than other people. In fact, we always pay more than other people. I think they re worth it. The girls are doing anal, double penetration, cum shots in their faces. That s what we sell, we ve got to pay for it.
And sell Private certainly do. Now estimated to be an $8 billion a year industry, pornography is big business worldwide especially since the Information Superhighway made it accessible to everybody and helped transform Generation X into Generation X-Rated and Private are by far the biggest of the European companies. Last year the Swedish-owned firm (which sells magazines, lingerie and sex toys, as well as making movies) turned over almost $20 million and, since February 1st, it has the distinction of being the first adult entertainment company trading on the Nasdaq National Market.
Arie is suspiciously vague about the overall budget for this movie but I doubt it ll cost more than $40,000 despite the fact that, through video and cable, it ll be seen by an audience of literally millions of people. So how much are the actors paid for their services?
That depends, it varies, he shrugs. It ll usually be around 1000 1500 Deutchmarks (#300-#500) for a day or a scene. Sometimes it s a scene price 1500DM and if they do two scenes a day they ll get 2700DM or something like that. A lot of the girls we use are Hungarian and they can make more money working for one day with us than they d make in two months otherwise.
Well, is that not still exploitative?
I don t think so, he avers. You know, a lot of the people get involved because they like it either they re perverts or else they just like sex. But among the actors, the girls and the boys generally get involved because they like sex and they want to make a lot of money very quickly. They do it for the travel as well a lot of our shoots happen abroad. So I don t feel that we re exploiting anybody.
I mean, everyone involved girls and boys want to do it. We don t force them, we treat them well. And most of them are friends. You know, we all hang out together, we call each other, we party together, we send each other birthday cards and all that kind of thing. And like I say, most of the girls and boys want to do it.
Well, whatever about the girls, the boys really really want to do it! As Private s Video Production Co-ordinator, one of Van Damme s main responsibilities is to seek out new talent and cast the movies. Private advertise for new actors in their magazines and after the end credits of their movies, but the replies received are almost always exclusively from men.
We advertise for models in general but what we get is 99% guys, he smiles. They send pictures and tapes and just about everything you can think of. I ve got a video of a New Zealand guy and he s masturbating himself upside down and shooting his sperm into his own mouth. Horrible! He s actually called me a couple of times and he sounds like a nice guy. But it s a little too expensive to get a guy over from New Zealand to Europe just for an audition.
As it happens, despite the overwhelming male interest, guys are still much harder to find than girls. According to Arie, there are thousands of pretty girls out there who ll fuck on film, particularly in a country like Hungary (ever since the Berlin Wall came down, Budapest has been the porn capital of Europe), where the only thing lower than people s wages is their spirits. Finding guys the right guys is the hard part.
Getting girls is easy but there s really only about fifteen guys in Europe good enough to make our movies, he tells me. That s more or less all we use for all the movies. It s very difficult. There just aren t that many guys that can do the job. But so many people try to get it! Our readers and viewers! They think it s great they like sex, they see all these beautiful girls and they want the job. Make money, travel and fuck beautiful girls! But it s really not that easy. And those fifteen all know each other and work together regularly. It s the girls that provide the new faces and the men who become the big stars. Completely opposite to America.
And what are the qualities Private look for in an aspiring male porn star?
Well, obviously enough they ve gotta look pretty good and they ve gotta have a big dick. The character for me is important as well though you ve got to be able to talk with them and get on with them and they ve got to be able to do what you want. And of course, the ability to perform is essential. You ve got to be able to keep an erection up for hours on end for three, four or five hours shooting. And then cum to order, of course.
It s also part of Arie s brief to keep an eye on market research and be sure that the punters are seeing what they want to see.
Anal is definitely in at the moment, he tells me. And Double Penetration is in. I don t know why. I don t like DP s personally. I mean, if I had a beautiful girlfriend, I would never call you for example and say, Come on, Olaf let s do a nice DP with my girlfriend! Maybe if she says, Well, I ve got a nice girlfriend . . . that s another thing, but no DP! Even when you re shooting it, visually for me it s not very interesting to see, because you ve got a sandwich one girl between two guys. You can t see the girl. I prefer to see a girl rather than the asses of two guys.
As we finish dinner (meat and two veg, incidentally), Arie explains how we ll be spending the rest of the day.
We re doing a lesbian scene now. It wasn t scheduled but it s just been written in. Normally the minimum on these kind of productions is six scenes but Antonio s just decided to write a few more in so now we re doing eight altogether. I think his plan is to do two different endings for the DVD so you can choose whatever ending you want.
Surely the plot s not really all that important? I ask.
He throws back his head and laughs. No, you re right. It s not important at all really. In fact, for most films you could write the whole thing on the back of a cigarette packet!
Given this, it comes as little surprise when he tells me that, whether it s deliberately funny or not, all dialogue in European porn films is referred to as the comedy .

The following morning I m totally exhausted. We didn t get back to the hotel until almost 3am, having spent the previous seven hours watching Betty and Juliana filming the lesbian scene fucking with strap-on dildos, rubbing clitorises together and performing cunnilingus on each other (and both looking completely bored every time there was a break in filming). Well, there was actually only about six hours of that. The final hour was spent filming the comedy and watching the girls struggle with some of the most inane lines of dialogue I ve ever heard (hardly surprising given that they were written by an Italian who can barely speak English). If Devil In The Flesh does actually have a plot, I ve yet to work it out.
But there s no rest for the wicked and today we ve been here since 10am. It s a different set this one has a couch and a table surrounded by life-sized bronze statues of erection-sporting Africans and, with the exception of Juliana, the actors are all new (or should that word be fresh ). The sex, however, is more or less the same as yesterday and, after a couple of hours watching a prolonged crotch shaving scene being filmed, I go looking for distraction. If you re not actually involved yourself, sex really does become pretty passi after a while.
I spend a few hours chatting to Anita Rinaldi, the beautiful blond 27-year-old make-up girl who, despite her PORN STAR IN TRAINING T-shirt is actually a former award-winning actress (she retired from the front of the camera five years ago). Like many in the porn business, however, she found it hard to stay away and now runs her own production company, as well as helping out on Private movies. So far, her company has made two films, one of which she proudly informs me, won her an award at Cannes last year (that s the adult Cannes, by the way). Her films are unusual for hardcore in that all of the actors wear condoms, something she feels very strongly about.
People come to the set and they all have to show their AIDS tests before they can work, she says in her singsong Hungarian accent. But those tests are two or three weeks old! You know, if you really want to have safe sex then you have to use condoms. Of course, you still need the test but just because that s clear, it still doesn t make it safe. There s HIV but there s also many other diseases Hepatitis A, B and C, Herpes and many others. And with some of them, if you get in touch with someone who has it then it s 100% that you catch it. And they don t test for any of those, so why bother testing for HIV? It s bullshit! So I think it s necessary to wear condoms. And they don t have to destroy the image of the porn film.
Anita actually quit the acting end of the business when a director refused to allow her to shoot a scene using condoms. However, she still insists that there s no more exploitation of women in pornography than there is in any other line of work.
Of course girls can have a very bad experience in this business because not all of the people are right in this business, she avers. Bad things can happen sometimes, but this is something that can happen in any kind of job. It s not about porno, it s about people. There are a lot of really great people working in pornography also, you know. It s often very artistic. We do wonderful sets, wonderful make-up . . . Okay, it s just about sex, but sex can be beautiful and artistic too.
And how do her family feel about her chosen career?
Well, in the beginning, when I was acting I hid it because I didn t know if it would be my future, she explains. So until I was sure I didn t say anything to my mum. But as soon as I knew that this was going to be my career I told her and she was fine about it. I talk to her about it all the time and she s very supportive.
Although she claims that she usually enjoyed the sex when she was acting ( If you don t enjoy the sex then you re really in the wrong job! ), she admits to finding personal relationships difficult.
Usually if I have a boyfriend it ll be someone from the business, she says. It s very difficult for other people to accept that you work on a set with people having sex all the time. In their own heads, most men presume that this means that I m having sex all the time as well. But you ve seen how it is it s not like that at all. But most men find that hard to understand or to believe. So at least people from the business know how it works.
You know, I have the most beautiful job in the world. I come onto the set and all day long I m watching beautiful guys having sex with beautiful girls and we re all friends and it s like one big family. But because of this because of what I m seeing all day long I need something much deeper. Of course sex is very important in a relationship but more than that I need a soulmate. I need a friend, I need a lover. My relationships need to be much more complete because of this.
But I don t really have that much time for relationships, she continues. Most of the time I m working so I have no time for a man in my life. When I go home tonight I will sleep I don t wanna talk to anybody, I just wanna be by myself. I don t wanna have anybody in my flat.
The longer I chat to Anita, the more I realise that while she s undoubtedly a tough cookie and extremely proud of her success, she s actually quite a lonely person. Her cocksure attitude really only begins to crumble, however, when I ask her about having children. She seems quite close to tears when she tells me about the abortion she had last year. And then she actually does wind up in tears (albeit reasonably well disguised ones) when I ask her if she had a daughter, would she like to see her going into the business? She says yes , then she says no , then she says maybe , then she gets really confused when she realises that the question has never really occurred to her before.
I leave the dressing room completely depressed, feeling almost as bad as I ve just made her feel and wondering what the fuck I ever hoped to learn from this whole experience anyway.
I spend most of the rest of the day hanging out with a young Danish TV crew who ve arrived onto the set to film part of a documentary about the European porn business. Thomas, Morten and Rasmus from Noirfilms spent much of last year in Hollywood, making a documentary about the American porno industry. It won them an award, so now they re making a follow-up. We chat for a while about the differences between European and American porn (one major one being that in the US the girls are the bigger stars and, unlike their Europe counterparts, tend to be hugely reliant on plastic surgery) but they positively laugh when I tell them that I d hoped to figure out something definitive about the industry on this one shoot.
Good luck to you, smiles Thomas. We ve been doing this non-stop for the best part of a year and we still haven t figured it out. Before we started making these documentaries I used to look at the porn business as a whole you know, porn is porn. But the more of it you see, the more you realise just how diverse the whole thing is. The big companies do massive productions and shoot for days on end and all that, but there s also a whole other line of gonzo-style porn.
We ve been to dozens of sets all over Europe and in Hollywood and we re still surprised by something new wherever we go. So it s difficult to talk about porn as a whole because you go to one set and there s a very good atmosphere there and you can see that the actors are sort of happy and everybody s relaxed and having a good time. But you can go to other sets as well, where there s a lot of tension and nastiness. You know, we ve seen sets where the directors are really hard to the girls, deliberately degrading them. So there is no definitive model. Every set has a different story.
Wandering around chatting to various people over the next few hours (I ll tell you some other time about the girl whose parents disowned her when her father accidentally rented a tape of one of her movies or about the Italian porn star who spends all of his hard-earned money on prostitutes), I realise that Thomas is right. Hoping to figure out the porno industry by watching one particular shoot by one particular company is about as pointless an exercise as attempting to figure out the music industry by watching one band rehearse. You merely pick up pointers and anecdotes.
And see a lot of sex.

I do, however, have a personal epiphany of sorts before I leave. At 2.30AM, following another long days shoot, cast and crew have moved to an abandoned old warehouse on the other side of Budapest to film an exterior DP shot. There was a time when double penetration was a big taboo, even by hardcore standards. Nowadays, every movie has at least one. With bats flying overhead and rats scuttling in the corner, it s a pretty seedy setting hardly helped by the props (which include a massive statue of a cock similar to the one in A Clockwork Orange) and, having watched Juliana repeatedly take two cocks into her mouth and then into her anus and vagina for three whole hours, I m just desperate to get back to the hotel and try to put the whole thing out of my mind.
Then, just before the finale the double cum-shot Arie calls over to me: Olaf, get your clothes off and get in the picture!
You re joking . . . I stutter and then, realising that he s not, get all embarrassed and tell him to piss off.
You want to understand the business, you ve got to be in the business! he insists. Now get your dick out!
I look over at Juliana, who s on her knees with the crotch of her panties pulled aside, holding an erect penis in each hand and looking tired but unconcerned at the suggestion. She even smiles at me. What s another dick, after all? Then I look over at the crew a big bunch of immature Italians, cheering me on to join in the fun (and leading me to suspect that they re all, in fact, gay). Then I look back at Arie. He s smiling half-joking, but half-not as well.
And then comes my epiphany: This is hardcore. But I m not.
I shake my head. Arie smiles. Juliana shrugs and absentmindedly continues to wank both the cocks. The crew boo loudly and give me thumbs-down signals. The bats flutter overhead. The rats scratch in the corner. The moment passes. Antonio who s also looking amused shouts ACTION! The show goes on.
Afterwards, once Juliana has swallowed two heavy loads of cum and limped off to the dressing room, Arie comes over to me and chuckles.
I had you all wrong, he laughs. Maybe you re like me. Maybe you re not a pervert after all. n