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Schnibbe’s subjects come from all corners of the porn world – you’ve got fringe talent like Lena Ramon, who cares for a staggering amount of dogs, fish, and centipedes in her tiny apartment; established workhorses like Evan Stone, whose dog has appeared alongside him in several films (as a dog, you perv, not a performer); old-school stars like Ron Jeremy, who waxes poignantly about his boyhood pet turtle, and Miss Sharon Mitchell, whose parrot is skilled at dirty talk; and fan faves like Brittany Andrews, who shares a snazzy apartment with two cats, and Teri Weigel, who is seen bathing a baker’s dozen of dogs, snakes, and birds with a zeal that borders on obsession. The majority of the pets here are standard-issue – dogs and cats – but there are also sugarglider bats (owned by Kim Chambers and Scott Styles, who gleefully discuss the bats’ preference for ripping the heads off their diet of crickets), horses (courtesy Sunset Thomas, who has a few corralled outside her regular gig at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel), and the aforementioned centipedes and turtles. Everyone seems to love their pets very much, and dotes on them with a mommy-daddy level of affection; Taylor Wane is seen cooking up spicy shrimp for her mutts, while king-sized black superstud Mr. Marcus coos and giggles over his tiny Maltese. It’s all very sweet and charming – but ultimately, you’re left wondering: why did Schnibbe choose to make this documentary about porn stars?
We learn nothing about why these porn stars own their pets, and how the unconditional love of a pet impacts a performer whose day-to-day existence is defined by impersonal sex. There’s also no explanation for why the performers chose their particular pets – yes, Ronnie J. owns a turtle because he grew up with one, but why does Lena Ramon own centipedes, or for that matter, something like 40 pets? Ramon suggests at one point that she’s happy that her particular profession allows her to pay for the whopping feed bill, but Schnibbe never pursues any interesting comments – is porn the only way Ramon would have been able to feed her menagerie? Issues of companionship, pets as substitute children (comments about this from older talent like Jeremy, Kitten Natividad, and Weigel would have been particularly insightful), and the challenges of caring for a pet with a job that requires owners to be on the road for weeks on end and is sometimes financially unstable are all glossed over in favor of cutesy-poo sound bites like Brittany Andrews discussing the opium she bought along with several cat statues in Morocco. And ultimately, it becomes clear that Schnibbe’s real purpose in focusing her documentary on porn stars is to simply aid in its sale by tapping the public’s interest in the prurient aspects of their jobs. For all its concern for its talent, Porn Star Pets could have easily been about plumbers or forest rangers or archaeologists – all of whom probably have interesting relationships with their pets, if a director cares enough about them to dig past the surface.
I know that my argument might smack of academic bullshit to some of you – “Who cares? It’s just supposed to be light and funny!” And I won’t argue with that. But considering the fact that the interest in porn stars and porn in general remains at an all-time high, while the reality of the business and its participants continues to be shrouded in misinformation and hearsay, wouldn’t it have been a more interesting documentary if we learned something about these people beyond the fact that they own pets? And from my own perspective, having interviewed my fair share of adult talent and found them all to be funny, intelligent, and insightful people, the attitude Porn Star Pets takes towards them, which essentially boils down to “Look, the people who fuck for a living, they really do own dogs and cats!” is at best depressing and at worst cheap and mean-spirited.
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Did
you know that porn stars are actually real live human beings who live in
houses and eat food and own pets, just like you and me? If that’s a
revelation to you, chances are you’ll be charmed by Margie Schnibbe’s
shot-on-video documentary Porn Star Pets, which profiles a
cross-section of adult film talent and their relationship with a wide
variety of pets. But if that premise isn’t exactly breaking news in your
world, you’ll probably find Porn Star Pets a pointless exercise
that occasionally borders on cheap exploitation.