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| Director Dag Yngvesson prepares for a shoot. |
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Over the past 20 years, the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles has emerged as the capital of one of the fastest growing industries in America. This industry, the pornography business, now generates more than 8 billion dollars a year in revenues, and has drawn in major outside companies from all over the world. At the center of this controversial new entity is the X-rated film industry, until recently an illicit venture run by the Mafia, which now puts out 50 feature length videos every week to a seemingly insatiable market that rents 600 million of them annually. Taking advantage of his proximity to the San Fernando Valley, filmmaker/anthropologist Dag Yngvesson set out to document the workings of Hollywood's prolific evil twin.
Rated X, A Journey Through Porn is a feature length documentary that follows Dag as he traces the routes into and out of the porn business, looking at work in the sex trade as it begins to adapt to its newfound legality and acceptability. Through talking to people at every level in the creation of pornography, (from a 19 year old former waitress who had joined 3 days before to some of the founding fathers dating to the late 60's), we gain an insight on where this slow to change industry is really headed, and how it plans to deal with the looming specters of HIV, racism, and deep rooted misogyny.
After spending several months behind the scenes, Dag is asked by a desperate porn director to shoot his next project. Although extremely reluctant at first, he accepts on the premise that he can fully document the whole experience. What results is an inside look at the trials and tribulations of shooting a porn flick, that turns into a more personal portrait of the star, Jeanna Fine. Although she is a ten year pornography veteran, her many battles with drugs and self destruction make her an unlikely long term survivor in the industry, as well as wife and a mother of a 1 year old boy.
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