Ever wonder why shooting porn is legal and prostitution isn’t?
Wait.
Scratch that.
Ever wonder why shooting porn is legal, and the cops can’t come crashing into my studio to bust me for pandering?
Pandering — 1 : the act or crime of recruiting prostitutes or of arranging a situation for another to practice prostitution.
2 : the act or crime of selling or distributing visual or print media (as magazines) designed to appeal to the recipient’s sexual interest.
In a couple words: Freeman v. California.
Hal Freeman was this cat who made dirty movies, and one of them — called “Caught from Behind II” (that would be the sequel to “Caught from Behind”) — was released about the time the State of California had a hard-on (pardon the awful pun) for porno, and they wanted it shut down, so they decided to bust smut peddlers under their brand new, very tough pandering laws.
This was in the 80’s, and Hal Freeman was arrested for pandering after producing and distributing “Caught From Behind II”.
Let me digress for a second: Bill Margold, an acquaintance of mine (I can’t really call him a “friend”, but we’re friendly…I just dunno if he’d remember me if we ran into each other) always told me the biggest mistake PT Anderson made with his film, “Boogie Nights”, was not showing the illegalities when making smut. Cause it was totally illegal to make a dirty movie up until Freeman v CA, so dirty movies were shot in secret places, and more than once Bill and the rest of the cast and crew had to haul ass from set when the cops showed up.
And he’s right — PT Anderson shoulda had one scene in his movie when Dirk Diggler and Reed Rothchild and Rollergirl and Jack Horner haul ass from set cause the cops show up.
Anyways, Hal Freeman was popped for pandering, and he lost his first appeal, and it looked like the State of California was on its way to shutting down our beloved smut industry.
Until Freeman’s case got to the Supreme Court of California, and they overturned his conviction because they felt hiring actors to fuck and suck in front of a camera wasn’t covered in the state’s pandering law.
The only way they could have nailed Freeman was if he paid the actors to suck and fuck him.
The State of California got pissed, and they took the case to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court decided not to hear it; hence, shooting smut in California was legalized. This was 1989, and, from what I could find about Hal Freeman, he died that same year.
I’m blogging this cause just the other day the state of New Hampshire ruled last Thursday that a man who offered to pay two adults to have sex while he videotaped the act is not guilty of a crime.
According to the court docs, the defendant “”was employed as a court security officer in Franklin District Court. On December 5, 2005, he asked a young woman, C.H., and her boyfriend, J.S., who were at the court paying fines, if they needed employment. After informing them that he could not discuss the job at the courthouse, he met them in a parking lot behind a bank. The defendant asked the couple if they wanted to make ‘fuck flicks.’ The defendant specified the details: he would pay them fifty dollars per hour, he would rent a hotel room, and they would use temperature blankets and different condoms while the defendant videotaped them having intercourse.”
Temperature blankets?
Condoms for the couple?!
Fifty bucks per hour!
The couple wasn’t interested, and went and told mommy about the bad, bad security guard from the court house, so mommy filed a compliant with the court.
Dude recently winds up winning, so now, in addition to California, it’s OK to shoot a dirty movie in New Hampshire.
As long as it’s not a POV.
Isn’t it ridiculous that there are still laws on the books that are written and maintained specifically to be vague so the Judge can call it heads or tales based on how he perceives the laws intent to read. Laws need to be specific to a crime and a connection made to a base moral value for which all laws were initially written; to prevent murder, assault, and theft. And a victim needs to be identified whom would be or is the target to murder, assault or theft.
(prostitution is offering ones body for sex in exchange for financial gain. Pandering is advertising/offering sexual materials or prostitutes: under either definition a pornographer or a performer are literally guilty)
The trouble is that these obscenity laws that a defendant was accused of breaking are not amended as a result of the mans acquittal so the next person to be tried for the same offense might not be so lucky. If the literal translation of the law is enforced then he’s guilty. If the literal translation of the law isn’t enforced then why is it a law in the first place? Our courts are trying to appease both sexually conservative and liberal while not addressing the real issue – the constitutionality of obscenity laws.
That’s how porn is legal and prostitution not.
Glad to hear my home state doesn’t suck as much as I thought. I mean it sucks, just not that much.
I am interested in a postion inthis industry and I would lie to know if you have any avenues I can investigate to do this or if you know of any ways. Thank you
I think it’s ridiculous that we’re all subject to biblically based morality laws… Like marriage it’s yet another gray area where “God” makes itself comfortable on a bed of your individual freedoms…
Child pornography is clearly wrong because children are “subject” to adult authority and so the exchange is not mutual. For that reason alone it is immoral (non biblically) .. But concenting adults should be able to diddle each other and critters and what all else as long as there’s no cruelty and even then, like the child laws that would apply to our four legged friends only because it borders on an abuse … There are plenty of adults that subject themselves to abuses of all sorts to get themselves and their partners off.
There is no secular culture in the United States… We are and have always been a theocratic plutocracy. And of course the folks at the top are the most decadent of all but because they have $ society accepts their kinks.. So in reality sex laws are punishment laws for being poor or more specifically for not being rich.