The Best Movies About The Adult Film Industry

Sex, for the most part, isn’t pretty. Amateur practitioners rarely look glamorous before, during and after satisfying their primal needs. But as the most basic human instinct behind eating, drinking and not-dying, we cannot help but be fascinated by those who offer footage of themselves doing the deed: adult film stars.

There’s something simultaneously powerful and pathetic about fucking on camera. On the one hand, you’ve asserted that people want your body. And those armed with sex appeal can damn near take over the planet, or at least, break the internet.

But on the other hand, this power proves fleeting. People who offer themselves in this way encourage objectification because, after all, you’re not thinking about somebody’s literary opinions while they're nude. But once time and gravity have done their work on every feature that used to make others drool, that objectification makes you disposable in favor of whoever can do what you did, but better.

And so, this duality proves ripe for the silver screen to harvest. The high of being valued for your body eventually leads to the crushing low of being tossed aside. It’s a tidy narrative arc, especially when factoring in the seedy opportunists who supply the adult stars with their preferred vice or want to get a slice of the action—financial or, ahem, otherwise.

The latest entry into this semi-sordid genre is HBO’s The Deuce, which tracks the rise of the porn industry in Times Square from the early 70’s to the mid 80’s. The film stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a grizzled, yet entrepreneurial sex worker and a mustachioed James Franco as a pair of twins who find themselves becoming a front for the mob.

So as a bit of fluffing before you dive into this latest release, here’s the 10 Best Movies about the Adult Film Industry.

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: 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.

Creators: David Simon, George Pelecanos

Stars: James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Gary Carr, Dominique Fishback

Franco performs double-duty in a period drama for which he has always possessed the perfect steeze. He plays twins, one an upstanding family man and the other a gambling addict who tends bar and gets in deep with the mob. Maggie Gyllenhaal gets to stretch her acting legs away from the manic pixie dream girl into a more hardscrabble role as an independent sex worker seeking to capitalize on Times Square’s transition from a prostitute-based to a porn-based economy. And elsewhere in the ensemble, there’s pimps and johns and cops and business owners that all jockey for position within the nascent industry. Mostly foregoing the sort of stuff that already exists in massive quantities on sites best viewed in incognito mode, The Deuce delves into the dynamics of a desperate community that sells glamorous fantasies.

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: 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.