Reviews

I saw this movie at The Avignon film festival in France in June 2004, and since this film was made in 2000 it means that thankfully it hasn't been picked up for any sort of distribution. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, by the time the film ended most of the audience had walked out. The director was on hand to tell us that the film was projecting a little darker than normal, total darkness would have made it more watch able. A word of advice to said director, if a film is at the very least engaging an audience will overlook the technical stuff. The film has nothing to with pornography by the way and to add further insult to injury this rubbish won the award for best American film, there was definitely a fix in there, somebody was paid off because I saw the other features that were in competition and they were quite good by normal standards, by The Pornographers standards they were works of genius. Avignon is a wonderful city, my vacation time there happened to coincide with this film festival, which was the centre of attraction in the local square. I met a lot of filmmakers from France and America all excited to show their films which is why I went along to the Pornographer, I met the director, who had managed to persuade Maggie Gyllenhaal and Irene Jacob to be in it. The lead male, Martin Donovan is so boring to watch that he could develop a cottage industry in torture boredom, if you want to torture somebody, strap them to a chair and make them watch the pornographer over and over, they'll beg you to kill them I swear.

I watched a copy of the collectors edition DVD, which my friend and I bought online, because we couldn't get it in any of the the video stores in Scotland. I moved to NYC in the mid-eighties and lived there for six years, which is what drew me to the film. It seems like a life time ago, but the nostalgia came flooding back as if it were yesterday. I have to say that I really enjoyed watching the film even though it was a bit corny in parts. What impressed me most was the film used New York as a character without the standard shots of the Empire State building, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park and so on. The documentary in the additional features of the DVD was excellent and enhanced my appreciation of the film because the story is based on real events and it's interesting to meet the real people involved. All in all it was a worth while 2 hours.