The 10 Best Movies About the Adult Film Industry

From sweet coming-of-age tales to raunchy teen sex comedies, to pornography of the soft and hardcore variety, fornicating on film is a pastime as old as the movies themselves. So it was only a matter of time before the folks in Hollywood decided that making movies about making movies about sex would be a fun new way to feature T&A with a (sort of) purpose. You know, find out more about the people attached to those striking genitals. Flesh things out, so to speak.

The results, not surprisingly, have been mixed, and this weekend, we'll have a new film to add to the canon: Lovelace, a biopic about Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat. Amanda Seyfried plays Lovelace, and reactions to the picture have been complicated.

Before that picture opens, here are The 10 Best Movies About the Adult Film Industry.

RELATED: 25 Adult Film Stars Who Named Themselves After Real Celebrities

Director: John Byrum
Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Jessica Harper, Bob Hoskins

Four years before he accepted the Best Leading Actor Oscar for Herbert Ross' The Goodbye Girl, Richard Dreyfuss was starring as Boy Wonder, a once-famous silent film director who, unable to make the transition to talkies, turns to making sex films in his delapidated mansion. The film, written and directed by John Byrum, was met with more confusion than acclaim upon its release. But it's an interesting little picture set in a time period—the 1930s—where sexual free-for-alls were far from the norm.

Director: Julie Davis
Stars: Leelee Sobieski, Matthew Davis, Denise Richards

Writer-director Julie Davis channeled her own experiences as an editor for The Playboy Channel to create this quirky rom-com about a recent film school graduate (Sobieski) who spends her days editing low-budget porn films for Grind Productions so that she can (secretly) use the outfit's filmmaking facilities to shoot her pet project at night. Along the way, she realizes that the line between high-brow art films and no-budget smut isn't as clearly defined as she had thought.

Director: Trey Parker
Starring: Trey Parker, Dian Bachar, Robyn Lynne Raab

Leave it to Trey Parker and Matt Stone—the creators of South Park—to devise a plot in which Joe, a Mormon missionary (Parker), becomes a part-time porn superhero in order to pay for his wedding. But Joe wasn't counting on his movie, Orgazmo—in which he wields a climax-inducing Orgazmorator against his enemies—becoming the most successful porn movie of all time, crossing into the mainstream and demanding to be made into a franchise.

When Joe refuses to participate any further, the director kidnaps his fiancee for leverage. So Joe does what any reluctant porn star would do: he invents a real-life Orgazmorator to fight back and reclaim his would-be wife.

Director: Scott J. Gill
Starring: Ron Jeremy, Al Lewis, Larry Flynt

If you thought Ron Jeremy was just a lump of a man who lucked his way into the porn industry, well, Scott J. Gill's exploration of one of the adult film industry's best-known—and most prolific—stars will prove you right. But it also provides a lot of suprising insight into Jeremy's background and family life, painting him as a smart, funny guy you might just enjoy hanging out with (clothes on, of course).

Director: Kevin Smith
Starring: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Craig Robinson

Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Banks) are longtime best friends and roommates who are struggling to make ends meet. So they come up with an idea: they’ll shoot—and star in—their very own stag film. But tensions start to mount as the challenges of filmmaking and the idea of having sex on camera become a reality.

Written and directed by Kevin Smith, the film treats America’s obsession with pornography with the same sort of talky dark humor that has become Smith’s trademark. The result is a light but likeable comedy with a cast that is clearly having fun with the material.

Director: Lynn Shelton
Starring: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmore

Like Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Lynn Shelton's Humpday imagines what would happen if two lifelong friends decided to have sex for an audience. Except in this case, the friends are Ben (Duplass) and Andrew (Leonard), two hetereosexual guys who—in an alcohol-induced state of escalating dares—decide to make a gay porn as an art project and submit it to HUMP!, a local (and very real) festival for amateur pornography.

The film, which won a Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Independence at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, is notable for its authenticity. Which is due largely in part to its mostly improvised dialogue, as Ben and Andrew (now sober in the light of day) reconsider the realities of their maybe not-so-brilliant idea.

Director: Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato
Starring: Linda Lovelace, Dennis Hopper, Hugh Hefner

If you want to know the whole story behind the movie that made Linda Lovelace a (hushed) household name in the first place, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s documentary offers an in-depth look at the making of, reaction to and after effects of the most famous porn film of all time. (For the fictional take on its creation, and the story of its star, see Lovelace when it opens this Friday.)

Narrated by Dennis Hopper, this fascinating doc rounds up an interesting mix of talking heads—Gore Vidal, Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt among them—to discuss the impact 1972’s Deep Throat had on societal mores.

Director: Paul Schrader
Starring: George C. Scott, Peter Boyle, Season Hubley

Hardcore may not be the best known film in writer-director Paul Schrader's filmography, but it features many of the same themes—including sex for profit—that he has explored throughout his career, from Taxi Driver to The Canyons.

Jake VanDorn (Scott) is a successful Midwestern business man with wholesome Midwestern values who is drawn into the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles' bustling adult film industry when his runaway daughter (Ilah Davis) is spotted in a stag film. Believing that she was coerced into such a depraved lifestyle, VanDorn enlists the help of a private investigator (Boyle) and sometimes-adult actress (Hubley) to help him navigate California's X-rated underworld in order to find answers, and his beloved daughter. But if Schrader's oeuvre has taught viewers anything, it's that happy endings aren't his thing (pun not intended).

Director: Shohei Imamura
Starring: Shichi Ozawa, Sumiko Sakamoto, Masaomi Kondo

Like so many men before him, Subu (Ozawa) wants to contribute to society. And the best way he can think to do it is to become a pornographer. After all, society needs a little titillation. And it pays well—well enough to help him support his ailing girlfriend (Sakamoto) and her family, including her attractive young daughter whom Subu can't help but lust after.

With its overt themes of incest, pedophilia, and voyeurism, Shôhei Imamura's adaptation of Akiyuki Nosaka's novel created a fair amount of controversy upon its release in 1966. But its over-the-top—and clearly satirical—treatment of these topics was truly groundbreaking at the time, and has allowed more and more viewers to appreciate the film as the years have passed.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore

There's never been a movie about pornography as widely celebrated or critically acclaimed as Paul Thomas Anderson's epic ode to the Golden Age of Porn. Maybe that's because it's not about pornography at all. Yes, it's got plenty of nudity, simulated sex, and one glorious shot of Dirk Diggler's impressive (albeit prosthetic) manhood. But take away the X-rated backdrop and what you're left with is a somewhat straightforward dysfunctional family drama that's not without its comedic moments. (Thanks to pretty much everything John C. Reilly says.)

In the case of Boogie Nights, however, "mom and dad" happen to be a dirty movie director (Reynolds) and his leading lady/girlfriend (Moore). And the kids in question are a ragtag group of porn actors trying to make their way in the world and find their true callings. Even if that turns about to be as a porn actor.