Winning the hard way

Ah, fellow porn fans, another year has come and gone. The year of 2006 was full of surprising events, contract shifts and the blossoming of incredible new talent…for the goddamn NBA, maybe!

What the fuck was going on in the adult film industry this year? Between Nacho Vidal getting into trannie films, Rocco Siffredi’s scandals on the set of Emperor and the launch of that god-awful Sirius Satellite Radio program “Inside the Porn Actors Studio,” this last year was rife with reasons to lose faith in the once-glorious field of sex films.

Tawny Roberts is alleged to have given Rocco a black eye on the set of Emperor when he started getting rough during shooting, and costar Janine Lindemulder says he cut the tip of his condom off and started spanking too hard during their scene. Either way, Emperor-which was nominated for several awards this year, though it won just a single trophy-wasn’t Rocco’s personal best. After his True Anal Stories and Reverse Gangbang franchises, it’ll be hard for the “biggest Stallion in the Italian Battalion” to get his glory back-especially since he admitted to having herpes this year.

Okay, so that was the bad stuff. What, you ask, was good for the porn industry this year? Well, the Adult Video News Awards-most commonly called the AVNs-are still going strong. This year’s gala event was hosted by Jessica Drake, a typical silicone-laden blonde bombshell representing Wicked Pictures. Also hosting was returning comic Jimmy Norton, whose raunchy brand of humor previously earned him the right to co-host the 2004 AVNs with Jenna Jameson-who, of course, was at the ceremony this year. However, it looks like lately she’s had more Botox injections than meat injections and has been eating less than Nicole Ritchie.

This year saw a lot of disappointing victories and a disheartening return to tradition. The last few years have seen awards given out to starlets that have deviated from the short, curly peroxide-blonde hair, enormous silicone-pouch racks and an entire case of Revlon upon their visage. Girls like Katsumi, British-born McKenzie Lee and the anal sex goddess-of-a-redhead Audrey Hollander all took home awards last year, and it was great to see their influence on the whole porn racket. Hollander was actually up for another award this year-contract star of the year-but she lost to Stormy Daniels, one of Wicked Pictures’ typically bland, overused models. Sure, she certainly earns the big paycheck with her rodeo-like riding skills and perfectly honed blowjobs, but even she has been built to the mold with recent implants and dyed-blonde hair.

That upset was hard to swallow (no pun intended), but the loudest scream of agony that night came when Hillary Scott beat Belladonna for the best video actress award. Can you believe that? Scott won for her work in Corruption, a tale that mirrors the sex scandals of politicians in recent history and which included a great orgy scene complete with plenty of raw anal sex and female ejaculation from each of the lady performers (a scene which did not feature Scott), but Bella was in Fashionistas Safado: The Challenge – which did win an award for best group sex scene and featured Bella in a stunning series of smut acrobatics and rapid-fire cum shots. Bella is easily one of the freakiest yet most elegant women in the business, and to see her trumped by a Barbie like Scott was just tragic.

The sole reason for Scott’s win with Corruption was the press attention it hailed. The movie got a lot of heat for how strikingly similar it was to the sex scandals haunting the likes of Neil Goldschmidt and Mark Foley, including hints of their underage sex fetishism. Maybe it would have been understandable to see the far more beautiful (and implant-free) Bella lose if Scott had been nominated for her work in Extreme Asshole Makeovers, where she really shows her ability to handle a prick.

The only really deserving award of the night was Jenna Haze’s victory for best oral sex scene. Haze is easily one of the hottest young starlets to surface in the past few years, and her work with other natural B-cup, long-haired brunettes such as Aurora Snow and Gauge is really refreshing. They prove that it doesn’t take surgical enhancement or three hours of makeup to make a great sex scene, especially with Arnold Schwarzenpecker and Donny Long (and two others!) in Jenna Haze’s Dark Side, which earned her the aforementioned award, as well as the award for best vignette. She released 21 official films this year and a slew of amateur stuff has gone out over the web in 2006.

On that note, porn DVD sales are down an estimated 19 percent from 2005. However, online subscriptions shot up (okay, maybe a little pun intended) over $3 million since the availability of Video-On-Demand (VOD) paysites have more than doubled. The risk of bumping into your dad or your pastor at the local porn shop is over, provided you have an internet connection.

No matter what happened with the AVNs this year, the industry is still thriving. 2006 was just a bad year for everyone, and hopefully all these new changes will come to be regarded as growing pains. After all, no one has a perfect shoot every time and we have a whole new year of fresh faces and facials ahead of us. Stay strong, porn fans, and the hard times will…wait, no, we don’t want those to…well, never mind. Just keep the faith!