(DISCLAIMER: This is an article about porn. You may not believe this, but I’m not a huge porn fan. I’m totally not.)

The greatest fictional adult film director of all time, Jack Horner, had a dream: he wanted to make a real film. He wanted people to care about his characters and his story. Then, VHS came along and ruined the industry forever. By the end of Boogie Nights, Jack’s movies were stripped (ha ha) down to their most elemental form – people having sex in his hot tub, shot on a video camera in one take. It’s a minor tragedy, but it still feels sad.

This is pretty much what happened to the porn industry in real life. Back when XXX films had to be seen in theaters, porn producers (or as I call them, “pornducers”) actually put effort into creating high-quality entertainment to lure in audiences. (“High-quality,” by the way, is relative. The very best of 1970′s porn was still worse than almost everything that was coming out of Hollywood – not that I’d know.) Once porn became available on video, people decided that enjoying it in private was the way to go, for obvious reasons. Since there’s a lot more room on video store shelves (behind those saloon doors) than in adult movie theaters, and since it’s a lot cheaper to make a video than a film, the market was glutted with product. Hot, hot product.