Dave Pounder Porn Documentary to Screen in Ft. Lauderdale

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—Dave Pounder hasn't had what one would call an extensive history in the adult business, appearing in just 94 movies between 2001 and 2011, though he directed 14 in roughly the same time period—but that hasn't stopped him from making a documentary on the industry and its personnel, titled Risky Business: A Look Inside America's Adult Film Industry.

The movie, which was completed late last year, has been on the festival circuit since January, and will be showing tomorrow night at 10 p.m. during the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, which is being held at the Cinema Paradiso (503 Southeast 6th Street, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301). A question-and-answer session will follow the screening.

AVN has not yet received a screener of the film, but Pounder summarizes the action as follows: "Risky Business: A Look Inside America's Adult Film Industry examines the social, psychological, and economic impacts of performing in adult films. What makes people decide to become adult entertainers, how do they go about entering the business, what are their experiences in the business, and how do they deal with career options, finances, and relationships once they exit the business? The documentary also examines proposed regulations that would address current industry issues, including workplace health and safety, such as mandatory STD testing and condom use, and job discrimination once performers decide to leave the industry and pursue conventional employment."

Among those interviewed for the documentary are Gracie Glam, Daisy Duxe, Kaylani Lei, Sunny Leone, Puma Swede, Tanner Mayes, Dale DaBone, Jack Lawrence, Cezar Capone, Santino Lee, Dirty Sanchez and several other adult performers listed on IMDb.com in some cases under their real names. However, several other non-acting industry affiliates also appear, including attorneys J.D. Obenberger, Lawrence G. Walters and Greg Piccionelli; Free Speech Coalition CEO Diane Duke; Hustler president Michael Klein; producer/director/salesperson Howard Levine; TTS owner Sixto Pacheco; AIDS Healthcare president Michael Weinstein; UCLA Reproductive Health Interest Group leader Christina Rodriguez-Hart; and even Tiffany Shepherd, a school-teacher-turned-adult-actress after she was fired from Port St. Lucie (Fla.) High School when a photo of her in a bikini surfaced.

A short trailer on the Risky Business website gives tantalizing glimpses of the documentary's themes, with several actresses stating why they got into adult acting. Somewhat troubling, however, are the implications that some performers have been forced by boyfriends or husbands to appear in sexually explicit content, and that many performers are IV drug users.

"You're having unprotected sex with a bunch of different people, a high-risk group, drug users, without any health mandate whatsoever," Pounder himself states. "The Health Department should introduce or sponsor legislation at the state level to mandate testing."

What isn't clear from the trailer is whether Pounder has modified his views on condoms from what he expressed at a CalOSHA Standards Board meeting in Costa Mesa in 2010 where he compared potential regulations requiring condoms in movies to laws prohibiting minors from working in adult, claiming that similar arguments could be used for or against either position, and that "if people get used to condoms, they'll want them all the time."

Tickets for the festival's showing of Risky Business can be purchased here. And for those who aren't able to get to the Fort Lauderdale showing, the documentary will be shown several more times this year, most notably on October 12 at the Other Venice Film Festival, which will be held at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291.

Pictured: Sunny Leone in a scene from Risky Business.