Porn’s lucrative dialogue deficit

Why the pornographic film industry is scrapping dialogue for more sex

The pornographic film industry is losing its already “casual interest in plot and dialogue,” said Matt Richtel in The New York Times. The technology-driven pendulum between story-driven pornos (suited for movie houses, VCRs, and DVDs) and loosely linked sex scenes (as seen in amateur videotapes on the Internet) has swung back toward the “vignettes” model, because three- to five-minute sex scenes can be split off and sold separately online.

The porn industry is shunning plot and dialogue for more sex scenes? said Peter Martin in Cinematical. “I am shocked—shocked!!” But seriously, if short, Web-friendly clips turn out to be good for business, perhaps Hollywood could learn something about our “changing viewing habits from the porn industry.” After all, both are suffering from declining DVD sales, and Internet viewership is only going to get bigger.

The difference is that porn flicks have always been lighter on the dialogue, said Christopher Beam in Slate. The script for your average 90-minute porno tops out at 25 to 28 pages, compared with 90 to 120 pages for a Hollywood feature. With roughly 60 minutes of a feature-length porno taken up by sex, there’s just not that much to say.