Star Attraction

Definitely overly high-brow for porn fans, this minor feature from Fred J. Lincoln and the talented screenwriter Rodger Jacobs deals with the borderline (and tensions) between the porn industry and its Mainstream big brother. Its mixture of cynicism and self-serving "porn is where the true creativity is" (b.s.) is a bit much to take in between the usual XXX sex scenes.

Jon Dough stars as a successful porn director (boasting about his six AVN awards, sort of) who never made it in the Mainstream, his script pitches regularly rejected. He's decided to give it one more try, taking a meeting with producer Sandy Bregman (nicely played by Marilyn Star), who he befriended and helped out with rewrites early in her career (strictly Mainstream for Sandy).

She needs help on a completed feature directed by Vince Vouyer which the MPAA ratings board has slapped with an NC-17 rating. Rather than cutting it to achieve the required R rating for a wide release, Sandy believes the ratings controversy can be exploited by giving her audience more than they're accustomed to, i.e. , close to porn.

Though skeptical, Dough agrees to help her out, and directs a hardcore threesome scene with the movie's leading lady Nici Sterling (including a d.p.) and Mickey G./T. T. Boy. She hopes for another "Last Tango in Paris", but the issue of whether XXX is going too far is not addressed here.

Scripter Jacobs foregoes subtlety for an in-your-face approach, as Dough occasionally addresses the viewer directly, pontificating about the superiority of porn to mainstream (since latter industry supposedly forces one to compromise one's creativity) and peppering us with frequent quotes and anecdotes drawn not from Adult but from Mainstream. Whether quoting Herman J. Mankiewicz or reciting George Sanders' pithy suicide note, this material is the height of "look ma, how erudite I am!" on the part of the late screenwriter.

I enjoyed the movie's infra dig content, especially a discussion out of nowhere of the Robert Mitchum "noir Western" by Raoul Walsh titled "Pursued", but ultimately Lincoln and Jacobs abandon the issue of Dough's career arc in favor of sex scenes, such as Marilyn seducing Felecia (the lesbian icon of her time) and Dough getting to bed both Marilyn and Nici. The notion that his character is better off as a big fish in a little pond rather than continuing to try breaking into the Mainstream is left unchallenged.