Mr. Pinup

by Bob Cashill

Twenty-five years ago, Brian De Palma planned to give porn star Annette Haven the lead role of “Holly Body” in his film Body Double, but backed off as controversy threatened to erupt. Today, Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh builds a whole movie, The Girlfriend Experience, around porn star Sasha Grey, and no one blinks. Why does the star of Anal Cavity Search 6 and This Ain’t Star Trek XXX land this rare crossover opportunity?

For the same reason that the 21-year-old has appeared in videos by the Smashing Pumpkins and The Roots, sat down with Tyra Banks, and been interviewed/celebrated by publications including Los Angeles magazine, Rolling Stone, and The Wall Street Journal—shaved and airbrushed, the porn industry just isn’t as dirty as it once was. I remember the filthy old days of the ’70s, when the New York Post ran titillating ads for adults-only fare like The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio (“It’s Not Just His Nose That Grows!”) and the neighborhood cinema where I grew up in sleepy suburban New Jersey went from showing Disney double features one summer to hardcore porn in fall. When Love Muscle replaced The Love Bug, a snake had clearly crawled into the Garden State.

In 1979, when porn was outlaw, it was easy to believe in the premise of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, which scandalized my high school. “Oh my God, that’s my daughter,” fretted the poster, above an image of an anguished George C. Scott. From what we knew of the sleazy shenanigans out in Hell-A, it was entirely believable that an innocent girl like the one in the movie could be lured from an amusement park in California, drugged and raped on film by “Jism Jim,” then transported south of the border for snuff movie murder at the hands of the fearsome “Ratan.” (It was never believable that Scott, as the girl’s rigidly conservative father, could successfully masquerade as a swinging porn producer to find her, as also happens in the film.) Twenty years later, a similar premise seemed laughably quaint in 8MM, with Nicolas Cage doing the worrying. It wasn’t just that 1997’s Oscar-nominated Boogie Nights had looked at the 70’s porn scene with bemused nostalgia. The entire industry had moved off the streets and onto our VCRs, DVD players, and finally our computers, where it became tamed and domesticated, at least for the viewer. The porn theater merged with the home theater; no need to hide behind a raincoat and join the unwashed at the triple-XXX bijou, or skulk out of the videostore with tapes embarrassingly concealed from passers-by.

via No Concessions: My Porn “Experience” | Popdose.

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April 7, 2009 | It’s been seven months since Alaska governor Sarah Palin was ceremonially hurled at the nation by former presidential candidate John McCain. Seven months of prepping and primping and practicing and coiffing and fitting and retracting and denying and obfuscating and spinning, and somehow, after 28 weeks, the woman still has no idea how to handle the press.

A media savvy governor, upon learning that her daughter’s ex-boyfriend and baby-daddy had granted an interview to talk-show host Tyra Banks, might have pounded a fist on a table, uttered a handful of salty expletives, crossed her fingers that nobody would tune in and quietly hoped that it would all get swept under the carpet.

Not Sarah Palin! No, this wizard decided the best way to tackle the (understandably irritating) problem of her loose-lipped would-have-been son-in-law was to publicly rebuke the kid, in a grandiose statement of denial and affronted morals, the weekend before the offending interview was to air, thereby ensuring that the episode of “Tyra” would become must-see television.

via Rebecca Traister on Levi Johnston s “Tyra Banks” appearance Salon Life.

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Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin may have split, but apparently he does not plan to cede the spotlight anytime soon. The proud redneck and hockey star that New York magazine once dubbed “sex on skates” sat down with Tyra Banks for an interview that will air on Monday. Johnston, sitting alongside his mother and sister, has traded in his trucker cap and Wranglers for some spiffy J. Crew duds. He looks different, as though he underwent a frat boy makeover.

Please avail yourself of the clip on Banks’ Web site, in which the talk show host grills him about whether Sarah Palin knew if he was having sex with her daughter (“I’m pretty sure she probably knew … moms are pretty smart”) and if the couple practiced safe sex.

“Yeah,” he responds, in a flat, utterly unconvincing way, like the kid who tells you he was not eating chocolate even as it is smeared all over his face.

via Levi Johnston on practicing safe sex – Broadsheet – Salon.com.

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Today, Tyra talked with 13 to 15-year-old girls who send graphic texts to their boyfriends. She had adult women in the audience read samples of these aloud, which turned out to be unintentionally hilarious.

via Tyrant: Tyra Tackles Teen Trend Of “Sexting”.

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