The first thing I did was research equipment. You don’t necessarily have to buy the most expensive stuff, but don’t settle for cheap, either. Cutting edge in ’02 was a 3 chip video camera; now it’s HD. But I don’t buy HD…yet. Meaning, of course, I think you can definitely make great movies without committing it to HD. Don’t forget there’s HD and HDV, and there’s the internet and bit rate compressions, and DVD is dying a slow death, and the medium in my industry is still up in the air, so just do your homework and have a little bit of a budget and you should do fine.

Have fun with lighting…both video and photographs. It’s something I’m still trying to figure out to this day. Just do your homework and make sure you get some help. I’d hire a pro for 1/2 day or a day…and if you don’t have the money to do hire a pro, find it. Or, read up on it.

Once your lights and camera are set, time to find the whores. Here’s where it gets tricky. I’m in LA now, where there’s tons of pimps all over the place. Professionally they’re known as “agents”. When I began looking for whores before I figured out the LA scene…well, I did the best I could. Ads and word-of-mouth work…sometimes. Referrals work sometimes, too…just gotta find other producers in your area, and hope they’ll share information with you. Some do, some don’t.

I realize the negative connotation “whore” carries, but when I refer to a porno girl as a “whore”, I’m not degrading them. I used to use “Porn Star” when I referred to any girl who did naughty things in front of a camera, but I don’t anymore; a porn star transcends the biz and their name becomes recognizable to people who don’t watch porno on any kind of regular basis.

Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy are porn stars. Anna VonTrap and Riley Winters are not.

Besides, it wouldn’t bother Anna or Riley if you called them a whore. Really, it wouldn’t.

So, you got yourself a whore, and you got your equipment, and you’ve learned your cameras and you got yourself a place to shoot your smut, and you’ve made yourself familiar with local laws concerning the production of smut (Los Angeles County is the only place in the country where shoot smut is legal), and you’ve decided exactly what kind of smut you’re gonna make (for example, interracial or handjobs or ass eating or dick sucking or solo girl or gay.).

You’re Porno, baby!

Did you remember your baby wipes and lube? Enemas and douches? Dildoes and vibrators?

And once you’ve shot your whore, how much do you pay her? Here’s current LA rates for a girl shooting straight content (give or take) and this isn’t the first time I’ve posted this information:

Solo / Masturbation / Toy Show – $100 (or so) an hour.
Handjobs – $200 a scene.
BJ’s – $300 a scene.
Girl / Girl Lezbo – $600 to $800 per girl a scene.
Boy / Girl Sexy Time – $900 – $2000 a scene.
Add a dick for $100 (or so) per dick, until the porn whore says “that’s enough!”

I could go on, but I think I’ve covered this before, so I’ll cut it short now, and if you’re really into jumpstarting your career in smut, poke around the blog a little and I’m sure you’ll do just fine.

I’m gonna go watch 300 now.

I was teaching as an adjunct professor in an inner-city community college district working desperately toward a tenured position.

I spent close to four years at that place busting my ass, too: besides working over-time all the time, I volunteered a lot, as well as sat in on every faculty meeting I could (even the ones that weren’t required) making sure to contribute everything I had up my sleeve just for a shot at that coveted gig — tenure.

When the gig was officially announced, I was one of 400 (or so) candidates for consideration.

A month later, there were three: myself, The Competition, and The Other.

The Competition was a middle-aged woman who was very competent — and excellent instructor who cared about her students — and happened to be hard of hearing. I think she was legally deaf, but I’m not sure. All I knew was she had a disability, and I didn’t; hence, she was one up on me…and it was a big one up.

The Other was a poet who just earned his MFA and taught the 6th grade. He wasn’t much of a threat; after all, he wasn’t qualified for the position, and I knew the only thing The Other had going for him was his close friend was a poet as well. His close friend taught at the college with me, and that’s the only thing that had gotten The Other as far as he had gotten. After all, The Other hadn’t taught a day in a college classroom.

I had almost four years in the classroom at that college under my belt, an unsurpassed student rapport, high evaluations from my superiors, and all sorts hours volunteering.

So did The Competition. Plus, did I mention she was deaf?

We interviewed for a committee of five. I got a fresh haircut and wore my very best suit…one that I used to wear when I sold stocks and bonds and taught wanna-be brokers how to pass the Series 7. I was very confident, too; three of five of the committee were my pals; one I scored “boo” for when his supply was dry.

I called this The Equalizer — she might have been deaf, but I scored weed for one of the committee members who sat on the hiring panel.

Weeks went by without a word. No one, it seemed, was getting hired. We were all tense, but we pretended like it wasn’t a big deal. Then, the word came down from administration: “Due to a lack of diversification in the hiring pool, the position will be offered as an adjunct professor for a one-year-only contract.”

Administration in inner-city schools believe minorities learn best from other minorities. In other words, a young black man, for example, learns best from a black professor, which is an opinion I highly agree with. But what happens when there are no minority candidates qualified for the position? Well, in my case, just take the position away, offer it again the following year, and hope to God a qualified minority applies.

All three of us agreed to take the adjunct position — if it was offered to us — and reapply the following year for the tenured job.

That same day I was axed, leaving The Competition and The Other.

I was stunned. What went wrong? Did I say something? What part of my hiring packet was incomplete? Did I fuck up my application? Maybe the lesson I presented The Panel was off?

I went to see Professor Boo. I really liked Professor Boo…I still do. He was an old beatnik poet, and he lived in a cold-water flat in Greenwich Village in the 60’s, and he was the kind of worker who dies before retirement, and he could tell some great stories: one of my favorites was when he would catch Thelonius Monk at the Five Spot in, and he’d show me how Thelonius would just jump up from his piano in the middle of a tune and dance around the stage and then plop himself back into his bench and hammer out more notes without ever missing the beat.

Professor Boo was no where to be found. I did find Professor Cunt, who was a big mouth know-it-all with a PhD from NYU (I think) so I guess that means she was a know-it-all, but there’s cool know-it-alls and know-it-alls you can’t stand, and no one could really stand Professor Cunt. She wasn’t on my hiring committee, but the way people talk in academia, I knew she would know why I wasn’t hired.

“My dear, don’t you realize that being gay is a diversification?”

This made immediate sense to me, but you won’t understand this…until I tell you that The Other was gay, and, in fact, he was The Lover of The Poet who taught in my department. Professor Cunt was smiling, and she might have even giggled a bit, but I wasn’t smiling…or laughing.

“So if I wear a dress tomorrow and start sucking a whole bunch of cock do you think I have a shot at the position next year?”

She stopped smiling. And I went into my office, grabbed the biggest box laying around, and packed my shit and hauled ass.

That week a friend of mine called. He had started some dirty websites on the internet, and he needed original content for them, and he wanted to know if I was looking for work.

The next month I was up in the hills of Malibu, high above the Pacific Ocean in a very secret place, working for a dude named Dogfart and a site called Blacks On Blondes.