Just as there was a dotcom bubble that burst around the turn of this century, so too did the free-spending for big-budget porn suffer a halt several years later, even though "Pirates" and its expensive sequel from Digital Playground and Adam & Eve were such huge hits. "Talent Scout" from Paul Thomas and Vivid is representative of big deal projects (like his hit "Layout") made in Europe for the international audience before internet and streaming killed this type of golden goose.
PT brought Bobby Vitale and Julian as male talent to interact with (and hump) a bevy of Euro beauties rounded up by actress/filmmaker Anita Rinaldi, who also contributes a brief NonSex outburst that constitutes about all the drama of Raven Touchstone's threadbare screenplay. It's a very simple premise: down and out former Hollywood biggie Vitale is back in Budapest auditioning femme talent, but he's burned his bridges there years before. His chances of getting a producer gig from super director Julian by delivering him a solid young prospect (Olga Rios) are snuffed out abruptly in the film's rather mean-spirited and obvious ending (PT puts a sock in the show in sudden and unsatisfying fashion, almost in the manner of an audience insult.
I am not a fan of Vitale, who appears in hundreds of important features that at the time received acclaim but fail to hold up. In this case, he is unappealing throughout, not an anti-hero but more of a blank (with cock) filling the Protagonist slot. Julian, on the other hand, is a smoothie here, convincing as the celebrity director whose huge cock is dutifully worshiped by several nondescript Euro babes, who presumably can tell their grandchildren that they had the pleasure of sampling the Great One's dick.
Rios, listed in IMDb under an alternate moniker that doesn't fit her well (Evelyn Stone), is appealing by not resembling a typical porn performer (plain, not beautiful, flat chested) but like the rest of the local cast she delivers English dialog poorly. For this occasion PT evidently did not require much acting or characterization, just satisfied with getting intelligible dialog in the can, and then on to the next take (preferably a XXX scene). Best set pieced is set in a vast spa where Julian has a threesome while another couple has sex in the background, the hardcore close-ups very well shot by PT's regular cameraman Ralph Parfait.
PT made several Euro movies, usually on a grander scale like "Emperor" or "The Chauffeur's Daughter", while "Talent Scout" has faded into oblivion, despite its meaningless (and corrupt?) nomination as Best Feature of the year back then by AVN.
