Arpad Miklos, popular star of gay porn, commits suicide at age 45.
***
From the essay "Big Red Son," which is about the porn business, by David Foster Wallace (himself a suicide):
Thirty-four-year-old porn actor Cal Jammer killed himself in 1995. Starlets Shauna Grant, Nancy Kelly, Alex Jordan, and Savannah have all killed themselves in the last decade. Savannah and Jordan received AVN's Best New Starlet awards in 1991 and 1992, respectively. Savannah killed herself after getting mildly disfigured in a car accident. Alex Jordan is famous for having addressed her suicide note to her pet bird. Crewman and performer Israel Gonzalez killed himself at a porn company warehouse in 1997.That essay, published in 1998, quotes the industry's gross income at an estimated $2-2.5 billion. You might guess that the number has shrunken since then, what with piracy and all the free stuff on the internet, but I'm seeing a recent estimate that puts the number at $14 billion.
An LA-based support group called PAW (=Protecting Adult Welfare) runs a 24-hour crisis line for people in the adult industry. A fundraiser for PAW was held at a Mission Hills CA bowling alley last November. It was a nude bowling tournament. Dozens of starlets agreed to take part. Two or three hundred adult-video fans showed up and paid to watch them bowl naked. No production companies or their executives participated or gave money. The fundraiser took in $6,000, which is slightly less than two one-millionths of porn's yearly gross.
Posts
20 comments:
Reminds me of the "God Made a Farmer" commercial
When it comes to suicide, both of the intentional and unintentional forms, few businesses can match the music biz.
Musicians start dropping like flies as they approach the age of 30. I got tired of going to the funerals.
So, I'm not sure I get the point. Should a biz bear a stigma because it either attracts suicidal people or because it makes people suicidal?
Some people enjoy a life of high risk. This outlook is embodied in the old motto...
Live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse!
I'm surprised, Althouse, that you haven't been covering the football concussion hysteria.
Here again, I always thought that everybody knew the risks of playing football. That's part of what makes the sport attractive.
I hate the rule changes that make it just about impossible to bloody up the QB. That used to be a big part of the game.
In all the carrying on about Junior Seau, few people have noted that his mother was a laundry attendant and his father was a janitor.
Seau's children inherited a huge fortune. We used to think that the risk Seau assumed was worth the gain. What changed?
I've never seen gay porn -- not my cup of tea -- but I have seen a style of porn that approximates a CrossFit WOD.
Also, not my cup of tea, but that must be what they mean by "physically-demanding."
From time to time, I am contacted by gay adult websites looking for a web programmer.
No thanks. Tolerant... yes. Willing to watch that shit for hours on end... no.
Likewise, many years ago, I turned down a job with a hetero adult website. The task was converting hundreds of hours of VHS porn to digital.
No thanks. And, I do like some hetero porn. Lucy Thai is beautiful and outrageous. (Althouse readers will now flock to Lucy's website! I'm going to have to ask for a percentage.)
I don't believe, Althouse, that you've ever addressed the huge death toll of the AIDS epidemic and you seem completely unwilling to connect that to the sexual choices of gay men, probably because it undermines your gay marriage crusade.
Some risks seem worth it to you. Others... not so much. How do you choose?
A lot of these people were abused as kids.
One book described them, "99% of them are some of the most messed-up people on this earth".
Clearly, it gives the lie to the phrase, "Victimless crime".
Never heard of him, but damn, even I think he's sexy, and that's rare. If he's not needing it now, and medical technology is up to it, I'd like to take over that body. I won't drive it as hard a he did, and I'll keep it on conventional roads.
Loneliness.
And why did Arpad Miklos commit suicide? AIDS?
Suicide is painless, so the TV songtrack for the show said (not very convincingly). The culture of death isn't new, but it is gaining.
I just hope that everyone here consider themselves properly warned and do not go into a career in porn.
I've heard numerous claims that organized crime is still involved in the porn production business, using it to launder money, as well as generate revenue.
Their involvement makes me skeptical of any numbers on revenue.
"Better tell me now, have you made your selection?
Are you ready for correction?
Cause the wages of sin are an expensive infection.
It'll make you bankrupt.
Better pay up now, don't interrupt.... "
Love for Tender
Elvis Costello.
"Better tell me now, have you made your selection?
Are you ready for correction?
Cause the wages of sin are an expensive infection.
It'll make you bankrupt.
Better pay up now, don't interrupt.... "
Love for Tender
Elvis Costello.
a recent estimate that puts the number at $14 billion.
That seems unlikely, unless it is a worldwide estimate that includes PG-13 material like Maxim.
Well it is a good thing that the porn business is not regulated very much.
I mean it is not like guns.
God rest his soul. I hope he made peace with Christ.
Trey
he broke into a data closet at a major engineering university and hacked into PORNSTOR to try and liberate millions of files...free the data!
Post a Comment