Don't pretend you don't know that the City Council voted on Tuesday for an ordinance that will deny film permits to porn companies that don't require condoms on set. Everyone's heard, it's perfectly normal. Now the porn industry is crying business unfriendliness and threatening to leave the city (the ordinance still has to be signed by the mayor and the Council has also asked for a special committee "to determine how it might be enforced," according to the AP). Vivid Entertainment Group founder Steven Hirsch tells the LA Times "If we're not shooting in the city of Los Angeles, we won't need those permits and that will be even less money the city stands to generate as a result of our industry?The industry isn't going anywhere in terms of shooting movies, but if we need to move out of the city or the state, those jobs will go along with it." He adds to the AP "Ultimately I think what they will find is people will just stop shooting in the city of Los Angeles?That's a given."
The LAT points out that soundstage shoots don't require permits; only location shoots, "in homes and backyards," for instance, would be affected by the ordinance. There's already a state law "mandating the use of condoms when workers are exposed to blood-borne pathogens," according to the AP. Hirsch says people don't want to see porn with condoms because it ruins "the fantasy aspect of it." Of course, he adds that porn performers are totally allowed to choose whether they wear a condom or not.
About 90 percent of US porn movies are shot in LA, "almost all of them in the city's San Fernando Valley." However, the industry's taken a pretty big hit the past decade from free and plentiful internet porn. Porn's most mainstream-famous player, Ron Jeremy, told the New York Daily News that he thinks the ordinance is "part of a larger effort to stamp out porn production in the industry's sunny San Fernando Valley home."
· Porn industry threatens to quit LA over condom demand [AP]
· Porn firms consider leaving L.A. after condom vote [LAT]
· Ron Jeremy exclusive: Will the condom law be a wrap for porn industry in L.A.? [NYDN]
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