What Is Gonzo Porn? We Asked Porn Legend John Stagliano
“Gonzo porn” has had many definitions to many people over the years. To unpack this ubiquitous (but often hard to define) term, we asked John Stagliano himself, porn legend and one of the men responsible for developing gonzo porn in the first place. He gives a concise definition of his concept of the term plus an overview of how it has shifted over the years.
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Transcript
Gonzo meant something very specific when AVN first came up with the idea of putting that word on this kind of porn filmmaking. Gonzo originated as a word to apply to Hunter Thompson’s writing, where he would interview something and inject his own personal reaction to the interviewee. And you knew who the interviewer was. It wasn’t treated differently as a discrete interviewer. So the same thing that I did with The Adventures of Buttman, where I’m approaching a girl and I’m like, “Oh, you’ve got nice tits — could you turn around and let me see your — oh my god.” It’s like my response was part of the scene, just like Hunter Thompson’s response to the person he was interviewing was part of the interview. And that makes gonzo something interesting, which means two things. One is there’s a recognition there’s a camera there, so you can look straight into the camera, which was unbelievably sexy, and which was really part of the reason gonzo has exploded so well. Because it’s a great way to shoot porn, with the girl or guy looking straight into the camera to be sexy.
But also the reaction of the cameraman, his interface with the people is what defines it as being gonzo, per the definition of that word. Therefore, when Jonni Darkko does a wall-to-wall scene where the girls are gorgeous and beautiful and he’s shooting this great tease — they’re looking right at the camera — but there’s no recognition of a cameraman. There’s no expression of an idea from the cameraman. There’s no interaction of the cameraman with the talent. That makes it not gonzo. That makes it more like wall-to-wall. But because they’re looking right at the camera, it kind of feels like the same thing that I was doing with Buttman, and feels a little bit like gonzo, so the industry has come to call that gonzo also. And I believe we need another word for that. I don’t know — nobody’s come up with it. Wall-to-wall was what we used to call something that was shot with no dialogue that was just sex. And then there were features, and then there became gonzo. And now we have something that is wall-to-wall but it’s looking at the camera like in gonzo, and there’s no word for it.
