Original subtitles

On April thirteenth last year,

HIV came to porno land.

Your test is no good.

Why are you calling?

And we should use condoms.

And one woman brought the nine billion dollar porn industry to a standstill.

How many people can I alert? How fast?

I've to make a quarantine list immediately and I've got to

maybe shut the industry down.

But amid the clamor to control an epidemic,

the dark underbelly of the porn world was exposed.

It's a fantasy of a lot of women to be completely and

utterly dominated, choked,

slapped,

humiliated.

Eventually, my ass was gonna fall out.

Eventually, I'm gonna be hurt,

and it won't be able to be fixed.

This is the story of how hardcore porn got out of

control.

This is Pornoland, the San Fernando Valley,

just north of Los Angeles.

Over four thousand porn films are shot here each year.

More than a thousand porn stars by by their trade often having

sex up to forty times a month.

Oh my god.

Sixty gallons of semen are ejaculated for the cameras every year.

Pretty much everyone has sex with everyone else every few months.

The vast majority of movies are shot without condoms.

All it took was one man and one rogue pawn shoot to bring the

entire industry to its knees.

I got a phone call from one of the popular male actors.

He had been out of the country in Brazil shooting

a movie and had gotten a spider bite

and had felt very, very bad.

The actor was porn performer Darren James.

He was called in for an HIV test,

but the test revealed nothing.

This test came negative, but at that time,

he had viral symptoms.

We didn't know if it was from the spider bite or or what.

So he went back out to work,

comes back two and a half,

three weeks later for his next test.

His test comes up positive.

Just how James contracted HIV is unclear,

but this was the nightmare Pornoland had feared.

All that now stood between the industry and a major epidemic

was this small clinic.

It's called the AIM Healthcare Foundation.

AIM Healthcare. How can I help you?

It's okay, but I'm not sure.

Every single actor and actress working in the San Fernando

Valley comes here to be tested for HIV at least once a month

whether they use condoms or not.

Hope I have good veins for you.

You do.

You have some very nice things in

Oh, these needles.

In this facility, we have between thirty and seventy people a day.

We're a walk in facility.

During the gangbang months, it goes up a little bit more.

The gang bang months are between now and January.

There's an awful lot of multiple partner gang bangs being shot.

Doctor Sharon Mitchell is an ex ex porn star and a legend in the industry.

She's developed a unique system designed specifically for the

world of adult entertainment.

The first thing that everyone does when they walk in is sign

this, and this is a special release,

and it's an authorization to release test results.

So in other words Just call them.

If we have someone Yes.

Thank you.

That's HIV positive, we're able to alert the community

even if we don't hear from that person.

And I know that sounds against every confidentiality

law in the United States, but here, it works.

Sharon's system is designed to prevent the spread of disease.

For six years, it had kept the industry HIV free,

but Darren James had revealed its fatal flaw.

That's not gonna go over well, is it?

HIV does not show in the blood until ten days after infection.

He probably was just at six, seven, or eight days positive,

and no test on the planet as of yet is going to pick up HIV then.

After initially testing negative,

James had slept with more than a dozen women.

Each of them had gone on to have multiple partners.

I knew this was a popular actor.

I also knew the type of movies this actor made were very,

very high risk.

HIV had infiltrated the porn system.

Oh, it was hell.

I mean, worried is not something that I get.

I get into

how many people can I alert, how fast,

I've got to make a quarantine list immediately,

and I've got to maybe shut the industry down?

The race was now on to track down each and every one of

Darren James's partners.

Dozens of people were at risk.

I heard the name, and I was like,

I was a little overwhelmed.

I was like, I think I worked with that guy.

By April fourteenth last year,

porno land was swirling with rumors of a major AIDS epidemic.

Porn star Darren James had contracted HIV while filming in

Brazil.

He'd gone on to sleep with more than a dozen women.

At the AIM Healthcare Foundation,

staff were frantically drawing up lists.

By a day and a half, I had all the first generation partners,

which means all the people that he had sex directly with.

By the second day,

I had all the people that they had had sex with,

and I built a quarantine list.

At that time, it was about thirty eight or forty two people.

Put them all on quarantine,

got them in for immediate emergency testing.

Near the top of the list was twenty one year old Canadian,

Laura Rox.

Laura had arrived in Los Angeles just a few weeks before.

I wasn't really gonna move to Los Angeles.

I just wanted to come here, make loads of money,

and and go back to to Canada.

I found an an agent on the Internet.

We decided I'd come to Los Angeles for a couple weeks,

And,

so we did.

I did.

Like many porn stars, Laura came from a troubled background.

Her parents had divorced and placed her in care.

When I was, like, sixteen,

I I went to youth protection center.

I met people that were a lot worse

than me, I guess.

Mostly, the people that are there,

like kids that escort or strip or steal cars

or stuff like that.

And

so that's where I met people that got me into the sex

industry, really.

When she was seventeen, Laura began stripping.

My father was very, like, ashamed.

He said, like, I used to be his favorite daughter,

but he couldn't.

Like, now I wasn't anymore because

because he was ashamed.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Laura found work almost immediately.

She was to have a part in this film, Split That Booty Two.

Darren James was her very first partner.

Appearing in the same film was porn star Marissa Arroyo.

Marissa was far more experienced.

She was twenty six.

She'd been in the business for five years and had made close

to four hundred films.

I think what it was is I think it fit my personality.

I think me and my job, we're kind of,

we go hand in hand a little bit.

I think it was just easy for me to do because I was already,

like, kind of promiscuous on my own.

Marisa's partner in Split That Booty was also Darren James.

Like Laura, she shot with him just a few days after he returned from

Brazil.

I had a long week of work, and I was really,

really tired.

It was like the last day.

Couldn't wait to get it over

with.

I got my money, and I just wanted a vacation.

I wanted to go to San Francisco.

I wanted to get a hotel.

I wanted, like, a spa. I just wanted to get my nails done.

I wanted to go shopping. I just wanted, like, ugh.

By the time Marissa shot with Darren,

Laura was already feeling ill.

The first scene I did, the the next day,

I started feeling sick.

I was feverish.

I had zits, like, all over my my body and, like,

I was thinking like, I I was wondering what I had.

You ready? You wanna go in the shade?

This footage of Laura was taken by chance just a few days after

her scene with Darren James.

Well, this is Max anyway.

It shows a meeting with porn producer, Max Hardcore.

Frankly, she looked, terrible,

physically,

exhausted, and and her face was all broken out.

And and I told her at the time, I said,

you have to get yourself fit.

I couldn't understand how anybody could shoot a girl,

in this condition.

What happened? Did did your skin break out from something?

Or I think it's the sheets from from this hotel that made my

skin break out of my skin.

And she says, wait.

I've got some,

photos here.

I could see

that at one time, at least, she was you know,

we would have shot her looking like this.

So do you have enough money to get back home?

Yeah. That's about it.

Or pay for my doctor and look for some shit.

Maybe she'll just get on that plane and go home now.

I had to cancel all my jobs.

And then, when I started feeling better,

my agent couldn't get me jobs anymore.

It was at this point Laura got a phone call from the staff at

AIM.

I got a call that there was,

Darren James was,

HIV positive and that there was a chance that I was HIV

positive too, and I had to go get tested.

Marissa too soon began to hear rumors.

I had talked to somebody who had heard that somebody

had been diagnosed with HIV,

and I was curious who it was.

I was like, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Who was it?

Like, and I heard the name, and I said,

I think I worked with that guy.

And I was kinda like and I was like,

I was a little overwhelmed.

I was like, I think I worked with that guy.

Laura's results came back first.

The first young woman that was from Canada was one of those

women that normally you would meet and you would see she was

emotionally unstable and a little panicky.

And I thought, boy, this is gonna be quite a disclosure.

But she was also one of those people that takes big bad news very well.

It was Chyenne Mitchell that told me and she was I think she

was more she was more devastated than I was.

She was like

she looked like she was gonna cry.

So I knew, like, she wasn't gonna tell me it was okay.

I was like, I was desperate.

I was hopeless. Not desperate, hopeless.

I felt like a sick kid that wants their

mother.

Laura returned to Montreal.

As Marissa awaited her test,

Parnoland was going into panic mode,

Not least because of the financial implications of an

HIV crisis.

Porn is no longer a dirty backroom business.

It's estimated to be worth up to nine billion dollars a year.

It's available on the internet and it's available in hotel rooms.

And if there's one company that epitomizes the drive to make

porn mainstream, it's Vivid Films.

We definitely don't call it pornography.

And not because we're scared of the term,

but it tends to have a taboo in mainstream society.

And the word pornography tends to just set off an alarm to the

world at large that doesn't really understand that this

industry is truly a business.

Now we're very much coffee table in that respect and that, you know,

if you take any one of our films and you were to rip out

the sex, there's still a movie there.

Vivid has a stable of contract girls who make films only for

Vivid. One of the best known is Brianna Banks.

Being a Vivid girl is great.

We get to, you know, do really, really cool movies,

play different characters.

You get to become someone else for the day or two.

And, you know, still work.

Great job.

Did you get a a close-up a reverse close-up on her face?

You actually have scripts,

and you can inspect her expect to be there all day.

You're not gonna do it in or in and out or

Most palm producers refuse to use condoms,

claiming the effect sales.

But at Vivid, they're compulsory.

Uh-huh.

I got very lucky because most of my career,

I did not use condoms and, you know, luckily,

I didn't contract anything anything deadly or, you know,

anything that couldn't be cured.

So condom only is the only way to go personally.

What do you think those will go?

Even though it's condom only,

in April last year when Darren James was diagnosed with HIV,

Vivid shut down production immediately.

Vivid is a huge company that shoots a lot of movies.

And if, you know,

any of these performers were potentially scheduled or they

had a girlfriend or a boyfriend that were, you know,

potentially on that hit list,

we needed to make sure that we weren't gonna put them in

jeopardy or ourselves in jeopardy.

My little photo. Please. Please lay over my name.

But Vivid represents just one part of the porn industry.

It may want to win the approval of respectable America.

But there are others in Pongoland who revel in their outlaw status.

I was the first person in almost fifteen years to have a

a federal obscenity indictment handed down.

Rob Black makes what is known as gonzo porn,

a series of hardcore sex scenes with no connecting plot or structure.

He's defiant in the face of legal challenges.

Isn't America founded on the belief

of of fighting for somebody's rights?

Don't we have a right?

Don't we have a freedom to to stand up for what we believe in

and and make movies the way we want?

Robb certainly pushes freedom of expression to the limit.

Much of his material will shock anyone unfamiliar with this world.

Gonzo actors appear to revel in violence and abuse.

Gonzo producers aim to shock.

Rob's most notorious recent film was set in Afghanistan.

Okay.

This is that. This is that. I'm out of here.

The scenario of it is we have a girl that looks like Ashley

Bansfield.

Remember the the cute little blonde with the glasses?

We had a kid dressed up like Bin Laden.

And on either side, he's got his two, Al Qaeda members.

We have one of the guys come out, and they they grab her.

They kidnap her.

They bring her into the the the tent or cave.

They bring her in, then they rape her.

America.

At the end of the scene, the marines

storm the cave.

They killed Bin Laden. They cut his fucking head off.

Blood spurting all over the place.

And then the Ashley Bansfield character then gives consensual

sex to the marines because she's thankful that they saved her.

There you go. That's a fucking plot.

The Gonzo world doesn't give a damn what mainstream America thinks.

I think it's boring to have people fuck in a bed.

Everybody fucks in a bed.

I wanna see people fuck, like,

on a graveyard or in a morgue or in a trash can.

You know, just something different so you're entertained.

The ideas for Rob's films come from his wife, Liz,

who also directs and acts in.

The inspiration for their latest film is her dog, Max.

Thank you, Gilmore.

The movie we're shooting this afternoon is,

titled Cockhounds, which, Lizzie came up with it,

and it's basically,

girls depicted as dogs.

So the the dog, like, sniffs out the drugs,

but the dog's a girl.

It's not a real dog. They don't have bestiality.

So she'll sniff out the drugs, and then she attacks the guy,

and they they fuck.

Today, I'm a doggy,

which kinda suits me because I'm nothing but a dirty little

doggy with the most basic instincts.

But I am a, a male police doggy.

What is it called? She's gonna be a chihuahua.

I'm a little stubborn.

Cool.

Since I'm really good at peeing and stuff, like,

I get to pee on this guy's leg.

Oh my god. Look at this.

She's she's got hundreds in her hands.

I forgot that. That's very rude.

For the top girls in Gonzo, the rewards are high.

Gia Paloma, to me, is the very best Gonzo girl out there.

She takes it in the ass. She smiles. She's a hard worker.

She shows up. She never complains.

I would say somebody with the kind of qualifications that Gia

Paloma has could easily make twenty thousand dollars in two weeks.

But the money doesn't come without risk.

There's no condoms.

No condoms.

You know?

Is that where you're going?

No.

Because if I was that worried about doing it,

then I wouldn't do it.

Put your hands up in the air.

Where's my fucking cut? You know I've worked the straight.

How long have you been doing this?

No. Look at this shit.

Fucking hey, Porno.

The shooting of cockhounds went somewhat awry.

Lizzie got carried away.

Get yourself.

Look at all this.

Let's let's get you let's get you some sacks.

Okay?

That's what we're doing down here and laying in your back.

Yeah.

Mother him with your ass. Yeah.

I'm Let's go do it down here and lay in your back.

Yeah. Mother him with your ass.

Blinded, battered, and bruised,

the male star lost something of his ardor.

Pussy. This is not how Gonzo is meant to be.

Oh my fucking god.

All the days work.

Split that booty, the movie in which Darren James and Laura

Rox contracted HIV, was rather more typical of the gonzo genre,

both in terms of content and in terms of the health risk it posed.

To understand how Laura got HIV,

we must descend into the bizarre jargon of the gonzo world.

The booty in split that booty means anus,

and the movie made a feature of what I call double anals.

A double anal is when two hard penises are inserted into a rectum.

If a guy is underneath you and then you're riding him, like,

in a this is called reverse cowgirl, this position I'm in.

His dick goes in your ass like that.

And then the second guy lays on top of you and his dick goes

in on top of it like that, and that's a double anal.

It was painful.

I was trying to picture myself on the beach,

like, doing something else.

I was proud of myself,

not it's like I was proud that I could I went through with

that without, like, crying or anything.

The likelihood of bleeding in double anals massively

increases the HIV risk, yet double anals are a common

Yet double anals are a common feature in the films of many

Gonzo producers, including Rob Black.

I don't know if double anal hurts a bit because I've never

had two dicks up my ass.

So I'm not real sure.

Some of the girls say it's uncomfortable.

Some of the girls say no. It's great.

I'd rather have two cocks up my ass at the same time than

kiss in a movie.

I don't like to be too personal.

I'm very familiar with that dynamic of, oh, we love it.

We love it. It's almost like a Stepford Wife. We love it.

It's great.

I sit there every day, and I, you know,

I sew up anal tears and anal prolapse.

And the physical conditions of what people are putting their

bodies through is getting very,

very far away from sexuality as we know it.

Eventually, my asshole's gonna fall out.

Eventually, I'm gonna be hurt,

and it won't be able to be fixed.

And then what will be my career?

Gonzo is high adrenaline, high risk porn.

Although legal, the Gonzo men are the bandits of the porn industry.

But when Darren James tested positive for HIV,

it wasn't just the mainstream companies like Vivid that shut

down.

The gonzo world followed suit.

By the end of April, the whole industry had ground to a halt.

The bleak warehouses of the San Fernando Valley,

where most porn is shot,

stood empty as Pawnoland waited for those on the quarantine

lists to find out their fate.

This became so big, and there were so many people involved

that everyone just decided, okay.

We'll just shut down for a couple of months and let you do your work.

For Sharon, the shutdown was a personal triumph,

but she was about to receive a phone call that threatened to

bring the whole fragile arrangement crashing down.

The entire Los Angeles porn industry had halted production

after just one actor contracted AIM

was

the

product

of a

AIM was the product of a traumatic experience in

Sharon's own life.

She'd been working in the porn industry for twenty years and

was addicted to heroin.

I was working at a titty bar in the San Fernando Valley for

fixed money.

And there was a crazed fan in the audience there,

and he was talking about my S and M movies and that I,

you know, was the queen of S and M and that I should be killed.

He was infatuated with S and M and Jesus Christ.

Nothing against S and M or Jesus Christ.

He's this particular person who just had a really nasty mix of both.

The fan followed a hole. He broke into her apartment.

He bit me all over my body, broke my nose in five places,

cracks my cracked my larynx in voice box,

fought me, raped me, beat me.

It was

it was

death.

I had some weights over by my door and I rolled

this encounter of us over to the weight pile and I picked up

a five pound weight.

And as I brought this weight down, I thought, well,

if it falls on him, good.

But if it falls on me, you know,

at least I'll die by my own hand.

Sharon survived.

She managed to knock her attacker

out.

She left the porn industry, studied to become a doctor,

and in nineteen ninety eight, set up AIM.

Since then, she'd kept the industry HIV free.

On your elbow like that.

The shutdown showed how powerful she'd become.

Why do I just tell you that?

But then Sharon received a call from an official of the Los

Angeles County Health Department.

His dick was beating like a drum because this is right,

and it's right, and it's, you know, it's porn, and it's bad,

and there's a bad guy.

We've gotta get the bad guy.

And he got into this this excitable mode,

and and all of his investigators were saying, this is scary.

This is scary.

The health authority did not trust AIM to deal with the

outbreak on its own.

For them, Sharon's success over the previous six years meant little.

They demanded access to Ames' unique database.

They got an order to seize the records

of those sixty people and called them and, you know,

browbeat them and terrified them and made it so difficult

for me to finish my investigation.

They wanted this one's address. They wanted that one's address.

We want this result. We want that result.

It was a clash of cultures.

The people of Pono Land against the men in suits.

We went in just as we would in any other,

investigation where there was an outbreak.

I think that we had to make clear that it was a public

health responsibility.

It wasn't simply a responsibility of a private

organization to make sure that this outbreak was being

adequately investigated and controlled.

I'm sure that sounds great with him.

He doesn't know what double anals are.

He doesn't know that the calls from us every

day range from how many chopsticks can I put up

someone's ass to can I safely come in someone's eyeball?

This is not the regular world.

So do I But officials were exasperated by the porn

industry's failure to do the obvious to protect its workers.

Since these are workers,

the only way they can be protected is by using latex

condoms a hundred percent of the time.

There's no reason that they should be exposed more than

would a worker at a building site not have a hard hat.

Doctor Fielding has some unlikely allies.

This is me. This is my, this is my alter ego.

This is when I dress up like a petite little flower.

That's from, Where the Boys Are in sixteen. Oh my god.

Shishi LaRue is a drag queen and a gay porn producer.

Hey. How are you? Good.

How are you? We protect ourselves in the gay industry.

We regulate ourselves.

We we

look out for each other.

And what's it called?

Shishi, like almost all gay producers,

uses condoms in all his movies.

What time? Ten PM? We don't do testing in the gay industry.

I think an HIV test is hilarious and ridiculous.

It's not something that people should walk on a set,

look at a piece of paper and say, okay, that's okay.

I can now screw you without a condom.

That's that's or get screwed by you without a condom.

I don't know if I showed this to you, but we use,

pink condoms.

At AIM, Sharon also aggressively pushes the use of condoms.

As you can see that kind of, you know,

with a little pubic hair on the end there,

that looks just like a well lubed fist.

So it would look like a well lubed penis.

So we we recommend these. We encourage people to use these.

But Sharon, like everyone else in the porn industry,

firmly opposes any outside regulation.

My concern is that the bureaucrats are gonna come and say, okay.

This is the law.

Everybody wear condoms, and and they've got a test,

and we need all the records and all that.

People aren't gonna come in to voluntarily test at my

grassroots organization again.

They're gonna go ahead and shoot underground and take their chances.

So long as the general public is going to buy

pornography without condoms, they're going to make it.

It's all about money. This is pornography.

Although legal today, porn still has an outlaw mentality.

It distrusts outsiders and fears that if they let public

health officials get their hands on the industry,

it will open the door to their real enemies.

So today, we have the work of the devil

to destroy a man,

to lead him astray.

It's called pornography and obscenity.

The reverend Lou Sheldon is head of the traditional values

coalition and one of the fiercest campaigners against

pornography in America.

He openly admits the HIV outbreak in the porn industry

provided him with an opportunity.

Hyming is everything. It was a wide open door.

It was a huge open window for us to reach in and actually

reveal to, most Americans how destructive this industry is.

Because it just showed how promiscuous they were and how

they go against nature.

It always seems like the religious right or those types

of people are, people that have fucked up their lives so much

that, you know, they they let a little fun get out of hand,

and they can't manage that.

Rob Black is contemptuous of porn's critics.

For him, they're all hypocrites.

Yeah. Fuck them.

The state of California loves the tax revenue that it generates.

The Marriott hotels, the Hiltons,

they all love the revenue it brings in because they have

their pay per view porn channels.

It's hypocrisy at its best.

But porn seemingly doesn't need external enemies.

The gonzo world does the job perfectly well on its own.

The most disturbing example was a photo shoot published after

the invasion of Iraq.

It depicts porn stars dressed as American soldiers supposedly

raping Iraqi women.

Rob denies responsibility.

I wish I would have thought of something like that.

American soldiers are raping Iraqi women.

You know?

Shit. But it wasn't me.

Iraq Babes was withdrawn after it began to be distributed in

the Arab world as authentic.

But around the same time,

these notorious photos emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in

Baghdad.

For some, it was evidence evidence Gonzo was starting to infect broader

American culture.

When I saw those photographs of Abu Ghraib,

I thought these kids have been watching too much of the latest

pornography from the United States.

This is having an effect on our sexuality.

This kinkiness, this type of, humiliation,

sexual humiliation is coming directly from a lot

of the content that's being shot in pornography now.

I think that there's been a,

exponential kink factor growing.

Things are getting more and more demeaning toward women, degrading.

It's very, very violent.

It's not about sex anymore or sensual

sexual eroticism.

It's about grossness.

Some college kids in their dorm room are watching it

and going, oh, man.

Woah, dude. Can you believe what they're doing to her man?

Oh, man.

At times, Sharon questions her own role.

She wonders if she hasn't become complicit.

Part of me feels, am I part of this problem?

Am I, like, fattening him up for the kill?

Oftentimes, that five or ten or fifteen percent of the real assholes

will almost coexist because they have that blanket of aim to hide under.

This promotional film for aim is taken from the start of a

Gonzo film.

Hi. I'm Britney.

And before I let a guy take me home for the night,

I make sure he's got one of these. It's an HIV test.

It's simple, easy, and it only hurts just a little bit.

Come on. I'll show you how.

Some of the most hardcore producers are among Sharon's biggest fans.

That's it. See that snap so hard.

The man behind this film is probably the most notorious

gonzo producer of all.

See? It's so easy.

Hey, baby. What place?

Are you tested?

You bet I am. Sure. Come on, girl.

For Max Hard core,

the AIM stamp of approval seems to be licensed to indulge his

darkest fantasies.

Now remember, folks, if you're gonna play, play it safe.

Come back.

A lot of women that I've come in contact with over the years,

and that is a lot of women,

really enjoy being dominated,

choked,

slapped,

humiliated.

We're gonna be shooting a boy girl girl scene,

which includes, the usual typical,

positions in the Max hardcore movies.

We got anal fisting and pussy fisting,

and we don't always do all of those all up in one in one

scene, but we do, we do always pissing most of the time.

With pissing, you can be fucking a girl,

taking out of her ass, pissing up across her body,

directly into her mouth,

and then going in a form of degradation or humiliation or

just for the fucking hell of it.

Usually, Max is the one that pisses on the girls and another girl

pisses on another girl.

It's kinda like a train. Max doesn't get peed on.

Max basically doesn't get peed on.

Max's movies also make a feature out of vomiting.

When you throat fuck, obviously, sooner or later,

one of the girls is gonna,

puke on your cock.

When we get deep throated,

if there's excess stuff coming out of our mouth, like

regurgitation

Yeah.

We, like, we, like, have it all over him.

So that's what he gets.

I'm not here to apologize.

I'm I'm just here to say that,

we make entertainment, and let's see how far we can take it.

Max runs an open access website.

This is where I talk about,

meeting, girls and and, you know,

what's going on in my life.

So you'll choose a girl that you're attracted

to, and it starts out in thumbnails.

The girl looks really cute.

She looks like she looks very youthful.

She's got braces on, which is associated with youth.

You meet a cute girl. She's hot. She wants to trot.

Let's get it

on,

baby.

Most of the clothes chosen by Max, like this is, like, from,

a regular store in a extra small size.

And sometimes it's even in the small children's department.

This is actually from a swimsuit,

from a child's swimsuit, and we use it, so

This is, dancing dresses.

We got leotards from children's departments.

Everything that's small is good for the movies.

Don't forget your accessories.

Everybody knows Max dresses the girls like this.

This is porn stripped of all conventional eroticism and

reduced to nothing but power and humiliation.

Are you guys thirsty?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love so much.

Max is another one for whom the boundaries between porn and

reality seem to have become blurred.

I think it's important to get inside the head of a girl

and more importantly to the to the to the viewers,

is how can I meet a girl like this?

Or what are the qualities?

What are the traits that that this girl has that I would be

able to recognize in a girl that I would actually meet on the street.

And I think that if, more guys would ask,

they'd be getting laid a lot, a lot more often.

The reality is that Gonzo porn leaves a trail of victims.

Laura Rocks was one of them.

And down in porno land,

scores of other women were still awaiting the results of

their HIV tests.

Porn star Darren James had contracted HIV while shooting in Brazil.

He caught the disease on a gonzo film called Split That Booty,

which featured double anals and was shot without condoms.

Doing a non condom shoot in Brazil is like a suicide mission.

Normally in Brazil, they use condoms regularly.

This is an American born problem.

The man responsible was notorious gonzo producer,

TT Boy.

James had gone on to have sex with more than a dozen women,

many in double anal scenes for TT Boy's films.

On April twenty ninth, Jessica d, another of TT Boys stars,

tested positive for HIV.

Then on May fifth, Marissa Arroyo's results came through.

First time I've ever heard that I shot on a test that is no good.

So if your test is no good Why are you going?

Then we should use condoms.

Marissa had not realized that Darren James had initially

tested negative for HIV.

The first time I found out was right now,

which is totally embarrassing that I didn't find out.

She didn't call me and tell me I'm sorry.

My test is no good, Marissa.

She lashed out at Sharon.

I was mad because she was talking about

the test, and she was talking about him working on a bad test.

And later on, she tried to make me look like a fool because I didn't know it

was a bad test.

I mean, porn stars aren't that smart,

and I'm only paid to be a good performer.

HIV got in the system.

That doesn't mean AIM failed because this is a harm

reduction model that I set up for people that don't use condoms.

I don't say that this is going to prevent you from getting

HIV.

I don't put you in the porn business,

and I don't give you HIV.

By now, Sharon's focus was on one last actress,

cover girl Kayla Marie, the only one of Darren James'

partners still to get her results.

Kayla?

Yeah? I'm ready for him.

I got a phone call, and I'm like,

do you know who Darren James is?

I was like, Darren James.

I worked with so many guys, so I'm, like, thinking,

Darren James, that seems familiar.

And then I they're, like, on April seventh,

I believe it was.

And I was like, yeah.

I did.

Once more, Sharon found herself confronted with a terrified young woman.

As it turned out, fortunately,

the ejaculation with the one woman that we thought was going

to be the fourth positive,

the ejaculation took place in her vagina rather than in her

rectum, and I think that saved her life.

I don't usually do anal, but that was one of my anal no.

It was yeah.

It was my anal scene, but he didn't come in my ass.

He came in my pussy, so that's why.

I didn't catch AIDS, but it's very easy to get it in the ass.

The crisis was over.

Once she came back negative,

it was like everybody went okay.

And after thirty one days,

we knew that if the industry was good boys and girls and did

not shoot anyone that was still on that quarantine list,

it was just a matter of clearing everyone out.

The AIM system had worked.

In the end, the outbreak had been restricted to four people.

Parnolan could breathe again.

I think Sharon Mitchell's a goddess, and she has a lot of,

like, detractors, but it makes me feel more comfortable.

Well, we all wanna live.

We wanna stay alive.

And, it's it's great that Sharon has taken the,

the initiative to put this together.

It's been a monumental effort.

Hi. Hey. How are you?

How are you doing, Sharon?

Good to see you, sweetie.

Nice to meet you.

How's it?

You're coming down.

Yeah.

Hey, honey.

How are you?

How are you? Good. I'm looking well.

Nine months on, and the good folk of porno land are happily back at work.

It's a great show.

I got a man.

You did a live sex show there last year.

Yeah. This is a DJ. I don't care.

A DJ in a girl girl simulation.

Max is one of Sharon's most conscientious patients, but he,

like the vast majority of producers,

continues to shoot hardcore porn without condoms.

The scare and the and the panic lasted for about a month,

and it went away.

People forget,

and people need to stop forgetting.

And they need to wake up and

protect the people that are working and doing their doing

their thing for us.

Sharon has set herself the mission of protecting the performers,

but she knows she can't shield them from the abuse and

degradation inherent in the industry.

I can't compete with the father figure

and the pimp and the bad producer or the scumbag agent.

And I have to appease them too

because I have to coexist with them as well.

Ready to go?

Ultimately, Sharon knows she's a part of the business.

When I see a girl that comes in and I know she's gonna be a catastrophe,

I can't say no. Don't do this.

Of course, I can tell her, please watch.

You know, if you're gonna work for Rob Black or Max Hard

Corps, someone that's a little bit rougher,

watch their last tape.

But oftentimes, I'll see those people coming back crying after six months

having had a bad time in the industry,

not making any money, getting taken advantage of.

It's very, very sad.

Laura Rocks returned to Los Angeles for the first time last

October to be interviewed for this film.

No one in the porn industry wanted to see her because of

rumors she planned to sue TT Boy,

the producer of Split That Booty.

When I went to Ames to get tested,

TT Boy was there and he was just

looking at me really,

I guess, aggressively, like,

trying to intimidate me with his eyes.

And,

he didn't speak to me or anything.

He just stared.

Laura is still looking into possible legal action.

I'm not afraid of the future.

I'm

I don't know.

Like, I'm uncertain about the future,

but I'm not afraid of it.

Like

Marissa is still living in Los Angeles,

but no longer works in the porn industry.

It can be really hard to one minute be to drop dead fucking

fabulously attractive and then all of a sudden have to sit

down and know that somebody

doesn't necessarily wanna be with you.

I like to be rambunctious.

I like to drink and throw my clothes off at the bar and

drag people home and listen to loud music and, you know,

like, I like to be promiscuous.

I like to have fun and those days are they're they're over.

But there's plenty more where Marissa and Laura came from.

Every day, a new eighteen year old gets off the bus in Parnoland.

Some will prosper,

but most will be chewed up by the machine and spat out.

Sharon and the AIM clinic do what they can to protect them,

but once they walk out the door, they're on their own.

To find out more what it's like to live with a diagnosis of

HIV, go to channel four dot com slash health.

Now tomorrow at five past eleven,

we follow two porn virgins as they embark on their new careers.

And coming up next tonight,

women already working in the adult entertainment business

talk candidly in Pornography the Musical.