5
CZ: "For the most part, I do not consider the movies I performed in to be art. There were a few exceptions -- namely, the Eon McKai films I appeared in towards the beginning of my career. McKai was a CalArts graduate who worked at Vivid for a short stint. He started their Alt subdivision. His movies had a conscious style that I think was absent from most other XXX content I appeared in.
Do I think porn is art? Or do I think there's a difference? I'm not going to be the guy to try and make that distinction.
Certainly, there are porn films made within a conceptual art context. And plenty of people are making porn with thoughtful care put into lighting and composition.
Personally, I don't find porn all that interesting -- whether it's art or not. It's a durational issue. A commercial porn scene lasts anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. Absent a state of arousal, who wants to watch anything so monotonous for that long? Sports fans, maybe.
To me, it feels impossible to make a pornographic statement last more than a few minutes without boring the audience or switching their brain over to a state of lust and stupidity. Let me give you an example: Gaspar Noe's Love. It's a narrative film, beautifully shot. And it contains explicit sex scenes that go on forever. For the first hour, I was entranced. Then I got an erection. Because I was watching the film at home, alone, I decided to masturbate. Once I'd come, I no longer cared about the film. The sex scenes were well lit? It didn't matter. I was watching ten minutes of the same thing. What a fucking bore."