The Green Door in the Floor

Show me the money shot: How porn made itself at home in America's living room.
village voice > nyclife > The Essay by Howard Hampton: "Delving into The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, you'll find reams of titillating, funny, appalling, and often pointless information on the $10 billion-a-year business that arose in the cum-mustache wake of Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door. The book dishes the dirt and zeitgeist in roughly equal portions, with hilarious and devastating observations on the passing scene from expert witnesses such as performer-turned-industry health activist Sharon Mitchell (who in the '70s snuck into a theater and gave a mind-blown patron a heart attack when he realized the actress on-screen was actually sucking him off in person: How could The Purple Rose of Cairo hope to compete with that?). But as with most oral histories, the bigger picture tends to get lost in a cut-and-pasty mosaic of who-fisted-whom gossip and flaky subcultural minutiae. As Bob Dylan could have said to Georgina Spelvin: You know something's happening but you don't know what it is, do you, Miss Jones"?