PITTSBURGH—Husband-and-wife creators Jessie and PJ Sage are featured in a new mini-documentary from Vice that covers the experience of producing and selling DIY porn as a couple.
The mini-documentary We Make Porn is part of Vice’s new series, Body of Work, which is based on the premise that “There’s always a way to make a buck out there. For certain people, using their own body is their way to earn a living. These small business owners have been able to capitalize on niche markets of patrons who want to fulfil a sense of fetish, danger, or pure joy. While some may disagree at these controversial pieces of performance, the folks who use their body find that they receive not only a decent paycheck, but a sense of empowerment. This is their Body of Work.”
In contrast to the sensationalism of many documentaries featuring the porn industry, this one focused on the everyday experiences of the couple as they navigate busy lives and produce porn together. While self-shooting porn in various corners of a home may not be as glamorous as mainstream studio productions, the Sages have and intimate, loving relationship that they share in both the documentary and in the content they create.
In their description for the documentary, Vice’s notes “Jessie and PJ Sage are a very busy married couple; they’re both academics, run a podcast together, and she writes a column for the local paper. To make ends meet so they can pursue all of their passions and raise a family, they make their own custom pornography together and sell it to clients or distribute it online. The porn clips they release help them advertise for other elements of their online sex work enterprise that can be more lucrative such as camming and phone sex operating. While the choice of their side hustle hasn’t always been easy for their friends and their extended family to understand, it has allowed them to have a more flexible lifestyle where they have the freedom to choose when they want to churn out sex-work related content.”
The Sages also host the Peepshow Podcast, a podcast featuring news and stories from the sex industry.
Apart from their shared projects, Jessie works as a phone sex operator, and sex columnist for the Pittsburgh City Paper.
PJ is a photographer and writer. He recently was diagnosed with the cancer and, shortly after the filming of the documentary, began chemotherapy followed by an intensive surgery to remove a large tumor and prevent further tumors from forming.
The video already has more than 250k views on the first day on Youtube.com.
It ran on Vice TV and can be viewed on Vice.com.
