James Franco’s Kink documentary – Behind the Scene

Kink, porn, documentary and James Franco are not words I would expect in one sentence. However, James Franco did put his name on a documentary about the porn website Kink.com. The 2013 documentary “Kink” (creative title, isn’t it?) takes us behind “the scenes” in The Armory. This is a huge building owned by the platform, where the Kink.com video’s are shot. The whole film reads a bit as a plight to stop judging kink and porn by their covers. So for people who are into kink, the interviews may feel like preaching to the choir. However, there are some pretty interesting scenes when it comes to the on-set dynamics between directors and performers.

Kink.com

As any porn website, Kink.com caters to a variety of tastes, signified by tags and different categories on the website. For this particular documentary the film-makers chose to focus on a number of directors with their own channels. These directors include Tomcat (“Fucking Machines”), who makes video’s of women with sex machines; Van Darkholme (“Bound Gods”), with his gay bondage; and Maitresse Madeline (“Divine Bitches”), showing femdom roleplay. All directors talk about following the limits and needs of the sub. For example, when a performer appears uncomfortable with a scene (though she never mentions it), director Princess Donna decides to adapt the scene to the performer’s needs. They ask the performers about their limits; make use of safewords; and discuss with the performers what the scene is going to be like and what they are going to do to them. See here a still of Maitresse Madeline (on the right) talking with her performers:

The Kink Documentary

In this film, there’s a lot of talk about role reversal: subs choosing a dominant role in their personal lives; dom(me)s being a sub in their personal lives; and both dom(me)s and directors having experienced every instrument themselves before they put the subs through it. This way, they safeguard both the concepts of safety and fantasy. At the same time, there’s a lot of talk about wanting genuine responses from the performers, instead of them “just acting.” According to Tomcat, these porn actors have spent a lot of time perfecting their sexy faces, but once they are with the fucking machines, they have entirely new experiences and those faces are gone. Apparently, this is one of the reasons why the directors love their work as can be seen in this still:

Though, as I said earlier, most of the interviews are different variations of the same theme (porn and kink should not be judged because…); most of the real moments are those between directors and performers. However, there is one notable exception, when at the end of the documentary the interviewer asks a Dominatrix about her children. If for nothing else, watch this documentary to see her response to the question “If your daughter decided to go and do porn, how would you feel about it?” Oh, and of course for the hot people doing BDSM scenes, because that is what this blog is all about 😉