Hot Girls Wanted

I was interested in this after hearing that Rashida Jones (whom I've always liked) produced it.

The actual direction, honestly, is ho-hum-large parts of it felt like someone just strung a bunch of random footage together and called it a "documentary". This (imo) is the weak point of the movie.

Now, here's the part I found interesting: the central point of discussion was the exploding "amateur" porn market. Now, unless you're a complete simpleton, you understand that the people doing "amateur porn" are actually paid, and the doc details how these girls are found (the only thing I really found shocking was that people still use Craigslist).

The main producer (think his name is Riley) basically is these girls' pimp-he finds them, puts them up in his house, books their gigs and transports them. Whether he gets or expects sex from them is up for speculation. The focus is on fresh faces, and most of Riley's house-guests can expect a career of three months to a year before they either burn out or have to reinvent themselves.

I do think these kids are being exploited, and here's why: one of the girls reveals that the average payment per shoot is $800. I'm not a porn industry scholar, but I believe that a paid "professional" makes more in the range of $2k-$3k per shoot. Also, due to heavy regulation in California, most amateur porn is shot in Miami, which requires AIDS testing but no condoms. At the end of the movie, one of the girls reveals that they still have to pay for living expenses, all their clothes, make-up, lingerie, etc...she says that, over a 3-month period, she made $25k, and when she left the business, she had $2k left in the bank. The documentary doesn't reveal whether the girls pay Riley rent or not.

The main difference between Riley and a pimp is that he doesn't have to force girls to stay because there's a steady stream of new girls coming in the door.

Not the best documentary on the porn industry, but there are a few surprises.

I say it should have been called "Young Girls Wanted" because what enabled the objects of this film to make money in the adult industry was definitely not their looks, but their ages.

Hot girls Wanted is an interesting (albeit skewed) documentary about one very small aspect of the adult industry. HGW focuses on a few girls who go off to a flop house in FL to take advantage of the money available to them via making adult videos. The film focuses in on just one or two of these girls, thus giving you an extremely myopic look at what is arguably the biggest, most lucrative industry in history. While you couldn't possible get a feel (pun intended) for the adult industry by following even a hundred or a thousand talents around, just how much can you expect to learn from following a few? And these few are rock bottom amateurs being managed by a rock bottom amateur.

I find it amusing how people rectify capitalism with instances of it where other people are making money doing things that they a) don't like, b) wouldn't do themselves, and/or c) wouldn't want family doing. Seems to me that the phrase "they're being taken advantage of" or "they're being manipulated" comes in quite handy to folks who can't grapple with the fact that quite often, what makes money valuable is that it gets people to do stuff they normally wouldn't do. Maybe it's a plumber who deals with feces on a daily basis, maybe it's the person that's flipping burgers for minimum wage, or maybe it's someone exhibiting sexual behavior on film. And while I'm certain there are people who do all of these jobs and love doing them, the fact is that most are doing it for the money. You could make the same movie and title it "Plumbers Wanted" or "Short Order Cooks Wanted." Either would make the exact same point.

But of course we have the double standard that sex is all at once wonderful and special, but at the same time "bad" to do for money. Please do this little thought experiment... Imagine that there are no more STDs, and that people are able to control their ability to breed 100%. No one ever gets sick, and no one ever gets pregnant (or impregnates someone) if they don't want to. Now ask yourself if it's OK for people (your wife, kid, etc...) to work in this industry. If the answer is "no" then you have some deep thinking to do.

As far as the "morality" of adult content in and of itself, I will offer this... If you wouldn't condone your wife, daughter, mother, son, neighbor, anybody doing it, then you ought not be watching/consuming it.

And I loved the puppy:)

An eye-opening documentary which follows a girl and some of her co-workers just starting out in "the industry." Totally a must watch. I am almost tempted to watch the follow up to this but I honestly do want to see anymore. It is just to sad to watch these girls getting taken advantage of by these twisted people out to make cash at any cost. And apparently the average girl doesn't even last a year! So there will be a bunch of dirty videos of the poor girl up on the internet forever just because she was naive and did not know what she was getting into. Why hasn't anyone tried to regulate this industry yet? There are a zillion Bible-thumping congressmen and senators but not a single one is doing anything about this? I smell backroom deals and payoffs.

When I saw that a new documentary just came out and it was gaining a lot of attention in social media, I assumed I knew what the film would be--about countless women being exploited by evil pimp-like guys. Well, the truth for the women in this picture was quite a bit different. Sad, but very different.

A camera crew somehow was allowed into a home owned by a young entrepreneur named Riley. Riley recruits girls 18-25 from Craigslist. However, he doesn't trick them in any way--he offers them airplane tickets to his home in Miami and they move there specifically to make porn. The home is filled with a half dozen or so aspiring 'actresses' and the crew interviews them and follows them on some of their jobs. They are there to have sex on camera and supposedly live an exciting life in the sun.

The part about all this that surprised me is that the film does NOT show strung-out drug addicts or illegal aliens forced into sex slavery. Instead, the girls seem to come from rather normal backgrounds and they want to be porn stars for fast money--bored girls with no thoughts about tomorrow. And, while I am sure some will find my words harsh, they seem incredibly vacuous and selfish. AIDS, pregnancy and the realities of the industry seemed irrelevant to these stars. They are simply out to have a good time and that's all that matters to them...end of story. This brings us to a major weakness in the film. You really don't care about these ladies because they all seemed to know exactly what they were getting into and they weren't very nice folks. They seem completely amoral and self-absorbed, so it really was hard to find much in the way of meaning to all this. As a father of two daughters, I was horrified by these women and their attitudes...but felt at least in these stories, they were involved with their eyes wide open...at least most of the time. The proliferation of rape and violence porn came as a surprise to me and some of them, as their fun lives (as they put it) stopped being fun when they were deliberately hurt or completely degraded in a few of the films. This part was a bit shocking as well as quite sad--and this was one case where I did feel for a couple of the girls, as they were raped or nearly raped to satisfy some guys' bizarre fantasies.

Overall, this film is mildly interesting but overly long. I really think with some editing, it would have been a more impactful film. As it is, I just found myself a bit bored with some of the girls' stories, though I was at least happy to see that a few of them chose to leave this self-imposed life. Technically, the camera-work was okay and the viewing experience was much like watching a reality TV show as opposed to a typical documentary. Interestingly, the film's executive producer is Rashida Jones--yes, Quincy Jones' daughter and who played Ann on Parks and Recreation. You can watch it streaming on Netflix if you'd like.

If you are interested in who the girls are you skip threw tumblr, youporn, redtube and so on this could be interesting to watch. The documentary tells you a bit about the young girls that do porn and why they do it. I was not really shocked about the girls and their life, that was pretty much what i expected. Sometimes i felt sorry for the teens, sometimes not so much.

Summary:

You watch porn and want to know a bit more about the work behind the cam? Feel free to watch "hot girls wanted".

You are looking for some good, touching documentary? Skip it.