Not Safe for Work: How Hollywood Helped Mr. Skin Become a Porn Empire

[grim22]

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/not-safe-for-work-how-hollywood-helped-mr-skin-become-a-porn-empire-20140502

 

 

McBride founded the site in 1999 with a database of just 1,000 actresses. Since then, Mr. Skin site has served as a plot device in the 2007 Judd Apatow flick Knocked Up, and McBride has appeared as a repeat guest on Howard Stern's show. With mainstream acceptance, the site had its most profitable year ever in 2013, despite the fact that pictures or clips of practically any celeb au naturel are a Google search away. It's all proven so popular that last year McBride launched a male-nudity-focused website called Mr. Man.

Along with Mr. Skin's mainstream acceptance, film studios and publicists have also embraced the site, helping it become somewhat of a tastemaker (so to speak). According to McBride, more than 75 movie studios, including majors like Universal and Fox, send screeners and content to the company each month. In the past year, McBride claims that Fox Home Entertainment gave the site an exclusive clip from Fright Night 2, and IFC gave the site a clip of a ménage-à-trois in 24 Exposures. McBride says the studios have figured out the influence Mr. Skin could have on viewers. (Representatives for Sony Pictures and Universal replied, "No comment." Other studio reps did not respond in time for publication.)

"If we put, 'Hey, check out Paz de la Huerta and Katrina Bowden naked in Nurse 3D,' on our website, that's incredible publicity for their movie with the number of people we get to the site," McBride says. "We don't care if a movie is good or bad; we just care that an actress got naked and we celebrate that. So we have a really great platform for studios and PR companies to promote these films that have nudity."

McBride employs a staff of about 40 people, eight of whom skim through the screeners for scenes to file in categories like "breasts," "bush" and "butt" for Mr. Skin and "balls," "penis" and "bulge" for Mr. Man. (He also has a "skintern" who does data entry; she just happens to be his mom.) "Occasionally a director or someone will say, 'Hey, heads up, I'm gonna have a great lesbian scene in this upcoming movie,'" McBride says. "But my guys don't miss anything. So if there's a scene, we'll get it when the disc gets to our office."

[Dementeleus]

And yet, a lot of actresses are a lot less willing to do nudity now, for exactly this reason. (Compare, for example, mainstream dramas in the 70s and 80s versus now.)

[RichWS]

 

 

 "Occasionally a director or someone will say, 'Hey, heads up, I'm gonna have a great lesbian scene in this upcoming movie,'" McBride says. "But my guys don't miss anything. So if there's a scene, we'll get it when the disc gets to our office."

 

Creeeeeeepy.

[Jim Shorts]

My dream job.

[baumer]

I don't think actresses would or should offended by this at all.  They already see them on the big screen so it really shouldn't matter if they are catalogued on a website too.

[BadAtGender]

I don't think actresses would or should offended by this at all.  They already see them on the big screen so it really shouldn't matter if they are catalogued on a website too.

 

Context matters, though. In the film nudity is (ideally) part of the package, and should serve multiple purposes for character and plot, even if, yes, there is a degree of titillation there. These sites put it just in the titillation category.