"Porn 101" -- The Remix: Adult Performer Advocacy Committee's MUST SEE Introductory Porn Video

[Personal note by Anthony: Yes, I know, it's been quite a while since I last posted here at BPPA...my night job combined with some sheer laziness on my part has contributed to that. I'm going to do my best to re-crank the posts here more often....and also add some more personal commentary rather than just recapping current porn events. Just be assured: BPPA isn't dead, by any means.]

Way, way, waaaaaaay back in the 1990's, when the LA porn industry was still more like the Wild Wild West in regards to its quasilegality and its means of protection, the idea of having an introductory video for people interesting in having sex on camera for pay might have seemed radical. Back then, though,  testing was still mostly a hit-or-miss proposition via the ELISA antibody test, and knowledge and education of the risks of live sex was spotty at best. That began to change after the 1998 "outbreak", where a performer was confirmed to have gotten infected with HIV (and faked his tests to hide that result); the Adult Industry Medical Foundation was founded soon afterwards, and DNA testing greatly improved the quality of protection. It also helped that AIM founder Sharon Mitchell got some of her best friend porn performer allies, including a well known performer at that time named Nina Hartley, to create a video and circulate it amongst budding ingenue performers. That video, titled "Porn 101", became the standard of that time for introducing newbies to the fruits and the hazards of being an adult entertainerHepa.

Flash forward to the current era...where testing is now worlds beyond even the heights of the 1990s, where the Internet and social media have both revolutionized and terrorized the porn industry, and where the rewards and risks for performing sexually explicit imagery have been amplified even more thanks to the added profit streams. Given all the drama of the past few years with piracy, STI/HIV panics, and the condom mandate, getting performers to speak in one unified voice and offer clearer and safer paths for noobies wanting in on the action is an even dauntier task than ever.

Which is exactly why the formation of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee couldn't have come at a better time.

APAC was originally the brainchild of performer/director Mick Blue and performer Anikka Albrite, who decided after the Great Hepatitis C and Cameron Bay/Rod Daily HIV scares of last year that it was time for performers to get together to represent themselves. Then they got two serious heavyweight high-profile performers, James Deen and Stoya, to join in and develop the core of the organization. From there...well, I'll just quote Mark Kernes' recent AVN article:

"APAC was basically formed by Anikka [Albrite] and me in my kitchen," explained veteran actor/director Mick Blue, "and then we brought James Deen and Stoya into it, and then the four of us started to build the APAC group, and Nina Hartley and all the others came to APAC later."

I should note that APAC is NOT related in any way to the group Adult Performers Coalition For Choice (APC4C), that was formed in the wake of Los Angeles County's Measure B campaign...though the two groups do share common goals.

As part of the process of organizing and educating performers, Blue hopped on the idea of updating that classic "Porn 101" video for the more modern era:

APAC has had several meeting[s] over the past few months, with one of its primary aims being the production of a new Porn 101 video. To that end, according to Blue, Kimberly Kane, Chanel Preston, Jessica Drake, Anikka Albrite and Danny Wylde met as a group to create a script for the project.

"One of the things I want to make very clear is that APAC as a group is responsible for the things APAC does," Blue said. "Kimberly Kane, Jessica Drake and Nina Hartley, they basically thought about doing another Porn 101 many years ago, but it never happened. Then, after the first Hepatitis C moratorium came up last year, followed by the first HIV moratorium, Anikka Albrite and me said, 'We need to make a change now to the industry,' so I started calling people and said, 'Okay, guys, we need to get together; we need to make a change. We need to form a performers' group where we can create a voice for performers, and speak, for example, to the producers and also Free Speech [Coalition] about moratoriums and so on.' When we shot the Porn 101 video, we invited other people to speak in front of the camera. It's now on YouTube."

To say that the Porn 101 remix is impressive is an understatement. Check out the cast:

And it's a hell of a cast. Besides Blue and Albrite, appearing in Porn 101, in no particular order, are Jessica Drake, Nina Hartley, James Deen, Danny Wylde, Stoya, Kimberly Kane, Kylie Ireland, Chanel Preston, Asa Akira, Kelly Shibari, Dani Daniels, Nyomi Banxxx, Bonnie Rotten, Penny Pax, Jon Jon, Casey Calvert, Toni Ribas, April Flores, Wolf Hudson, Xander Corvus, Ryan Driller, Claire Robbins, Chloe Foster, Jay Taylor, Alina Li, Zak Sabbath and Mandy Morbid—many of whom are also members of APAC.

"For us, it's all about the need to make our industry safer and to explain to people that are working in the industry that they have responsibilities to all the other people they work with," Blue said. "It's like explaining to them, 'Look, you need to watch out what you do in your private life because everything you do in your private life can put everybody who is in the industry who is working with you in danger as well, as we've seen in the past three moratoriums.' So we hope that through this video, people are going to get a better idea about our industry and about their responsibilities and also about their own bodies and their own safety regarding agents, producers and so on."

Kernes' article does a much better job of summarizing all the goodness of this video; feel free to go to his article. I'd rather just let you watch for yourself. So, with full thanks and appreciation to APAC for their permission to repost: here you go, folks. (Original here, via YouTube, props also to Kinky.com)

Well done and done well, gang!!!





 

Monica Foster Breaks Down The 411 On Getting Into Porn With GettingIntoPorn.com

There are many ways and many approaches into getting into the adult entertainment media....some good and some not so good. For many women (and not a few men) who are thinking about getting in porn, the experience is usually through the seat of their pants...quite literally. Although there have been attempts in the past to provide guidance to women entering the industry -- such as the original Pink Ladies Social Club of the 1980's formed by activist porn women (including Nina Hartley, Angel Kelly, Jeanna Fine, and others); as well as the "Porn 101" video that was originally offered during the 90's by Sharon Mitchell and AIM (and which also happened to feature Nina as well) -- for the most part the most that many women have in preparation for adult has been on-the-job training, which might not be the best way to learn about the pitfalls and benefits of being an adult performer.

Fortunately, more and more active performers are beginning to speak out and mentor to wannabe starlets and performers alike about the risks and benefits.

Monica Foster happens to be one of them...and she has parlayed her own experiences in transitioning from an erotic dancer to a full-time adult XXX performer into a website (GettingIntoPorn.com) geared towards educating women and men interested in getting into the industry.

Ms. Foster's site is very much comprehensive, and pulls no punches on what she thinks about the state of the industry and the expectations and benefits for newcummers. From the enclosed Flash video where she explains why she decided to launch this site and examines her own experiences -- good and bad -- in porn, to the enhanced breakdown of everything from establishing your "pre-porn" mindset and foundation to finding an agency to promote your talents to dealing with issues in shooting a scene; Monica really does an excellent job of providing the tools needed for interested persons to make informed decisions about doing XXX videos and other explicit sexual media.

And she manages to do this without the usual preaching and moralizing about how porn should only be this way or that way; she simply states the facts as they exist, and leaves it up to the viewer to consider her own destiny. She does allow for her own personal beliefs and perspective as a Black female porn performer, which is very much refreshing considering the usual lack of visibility amongst Black women in porn.

Monica's site is backed up by an associated blog, a MySpace page, and a series of videos available on YouTube.

Anyone who wants an honest, yet positive and accurate guide into getting into "the industry" should go immediately to Monica's site....it is more than worth the time.