Playboy: The Story of X

this documentary has humor, a bit of poignancy, and seemingly, the desire to turn the viewer on to it's flip-side of the film industry. to call this a GREAT film, would be to give REAL documentaries a kick in the pants. to totally disparage it, would be to give this otherwise fine work a grave disservice. It WORKS because it leaves the viewer with an impression of the industry. I felt the shame and humiliation these individuals must have felt, sitting there, watching it. especially of interest is the early portion of the piece, when it explores PORN'S early days, and it is during this that the "film" generates much of it humor. All in all, it gave me much to think about. there are interviews to spare, with those both in and out of the industry. what they have to say is very revealing, to those who know little of this subject. it is not as if this came as a TRUE revelation to me, but it was nice to know that not everybody involved in adult films are utter trash. though rated X, the film shows no less than the average NC-17 film, although when people engage in sex in this, it is real, not faked. all in all, what will most likely go down in history as the best sex documentary ever made.

This would've been interesting as a 2 or 3 hour topic on "Frontline". However, Playboy didn't do the subject any justice. They don't delve too deeply into any topics. Several things such as theaters being raided, anti-pornography groups protesting, studies done showing effects of viewing pornography, or the whole fiscal aspect of the industry are barely mentioned. They would just scratch the surface of a topic and move on which results in a real fluff piece. Since this is produced by Playboy, they would obviously have a conflict of interest in reporting any negatives regarding the porn industry. I'm against censorship and I fall on their side of the fence but treating the XXX industry with kid gloves makes for extremely dull viewing. 2/10