Boogie Nights in Suburbia was shown as part of Channel 4's Censored season in 1999. The film starts with an awfully written introduction by Mark Kermode. Don't get me wrong I respect him as a film critic and I think he is a very good writer, but this was just cliché ridden and felt like it was knocked up on a lunch break on the back of a cigarette packet. It even contained the phrase "no sex please we're British". That said the other introductions he provided for the season were generally sound, this was just the weakest of the bunch. The film came out the year hardcore pornography was legalised in the UK; the UK for many years still suffered strict censorship.
The actual film is as the awful title suggests about porn making in suburbia. I think the much better title Sex in Suburbia or similar was later used on a Channel 5 series. The TV movie follows three "pornographers". These are Derek Botham (sometimes credited as Deric Botham) who has worked on various top shelf magazines such as 40 Plus, Michael Rutt who I've not managed to find much out about and Ben Dover who was fairly well-known in 1999, but is now an almost household name as being a leading producer and star of British Gonzo. Sandwiched in-between these we have tales from the girls that star in the films and photo shoots themselves. Despite what I've read elsewhere I didn't find these stories particularly depressing. One girl had fallen on hard times with two children and was struggling to get-by. This is fairly standard for a documentary of this type; I couldn't help but feel for her. Other comments I read claimed the men were sleazy. In places maybe, but I just saw them as doing a job they enjoy. I didn't see the documentary as being exploitative on either side and the more recent Channel 4 documentaries from 2005 were far sleazier.
The film has been shot in mainly black & film or shot in colour and changed to monochrome in post which was a weird design choice. The sex scenes of which there are very few are largely in colour. I don't think there is any real symbolism to this. The film looks like it was shot on (digital) video and using mainly natural lighting; to put it simply - it was not suited to monochrome photography. This results in a lot of the documentary looking flat and plain. I respect that at this time programme makers tended to take more risks with editing and filming, now pretty much every TV documentary looks the same, this was never the case in the 90s and early 00s.
All in all I thought this documentary was balanced and non-exploitative. There's very little "action" in the film, possibly due to it being made over 20 years ago, it might be different had been filmed today with less stringent guidelines of what is acceptable on UK TV. Another documentary called "Porn Wars" came out the same year and used some of the same cast. I've not managed to find this documentary, but I wonder if it re-used footage. I can recommend this documentary it is probably everything you have seen before, but it is well put-together and interesting although at nearly 50 minutes it does outstay its welcome.
