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Review
'An eminently readable account of utter filth. Just my cup of tea.' Griff Rhys Jones
'Funny, insightful and not at all unpleasant. Well, okay, maybe a little bit unpleasant but you can always avert your gaze.' Jonathan Ross
'This is the Springtime For Hitler of porn. It's a gripping adventure, and obviously the funniest book you'll read all year.' Caitlin Moran
'Strangely avoiding the obvious title Hansel and Gretel in Porno Hell, Victoria and Charlie have succeeded in writing a book they are not old
enough to read. Certainly I wasn't.' Clive James
‘Exceedingly funny’ Tatler
‘Extremely funny, surprisingly heart-warming’ GQ
'A satisfyingly prurient read, a hybrid of Eurotrash and Ealing comedy, with added lube.'
Ian Thomson, Daily Telegraph
‘You will not read a funnier account of shooting a porn movie.’ Jeanette Winterson
'It is a relentlessly funny book and I couldn't put it down.' Stephanie Merritt, Observer
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Customer Reviews
The second half of the book, where they move to Amsterdam to shoot the film, I found less interesting, though again the cast of characters is fascinating. One of their actors is described as being "an old-fashioned romantic. Not old-fashioned romantic for a bisexual Yugoslavian rent-boy, just old-fashioned romantic." Martina, the main protagonist in the film's oral sex scene, is an ex-junkie nurse who spends Christmas with dying AIDS patients. She has plans to get out of the sex industry altogether, and you would be inclined to wish her well after reading about her.
The film itself, quite frankly, sounds like a load of you-know-what. But this is a fine book, well written, funny (not laugh-out-loud hilarious, just genuinely funny), interesting, revealing and well worth reading.
Books written by two people are often uneven in tone and this is no exception. The writing styles whiz back and forth as do the comments on each others writing and ideas, which although supposed to be funny I found a little distracting and a bit too luvvie.
The narrative is quite picaresque, whisking between locations, ideas, scenes and cutaways to random pieces which I think are meant to add colour, humour and humanity, but which don't always work. The emotional tone also veers between the farcical quality of a production of 'whoops there go my bloomers', to discussions of fisting and then on to the moral dilemmas of whether hiring an asylum seeking victim of political violence who is wanted by the authorities and has no warrant card, who is forced to work in the sex industry just to eat is a good thing or a bad thing.
The film, they admit, turns out to be a bit of a mess, neither fish nor fowl, and clearly put together by rank amateurs. The book comes across in much the same light, which is a shame. I understand that in many ways this was a 'fun thing to do', which turned into an emotional journey and took them to places they never expected to be. This much is clear from the narrative. It doesn't excuse the fact that the book could have done with some serious editing and a bit more thought to bring out what are some excellent ideas and in parts some really good stuff, which as it is are lost in a melee of random stuff just thrown onto the page.
The description of this book by some critics a "rip roaring, thigh slapping comedy" falls a little short. It is more than that. It is also a moving, dark and often sad self discovery process for the authors and also the reader as they explore the 'darker' side of humanity...in the form of rent boys and whores with no money, no prospect and no passports just trying to get by in the city of sin - of people taking advantage of others - and of people seeing and living this dark side and then trying to make a difference. There are some witty, profound, sexy and occasionally downright weird characters that Vicky and Charlie (the authors) pick up along the way, but all are given a chance to explain themselves and their industry, and i think the authors give them a very open minded (if not slightly tongue in cheek) hearing before handing down judgement. The authors also seem to maintain an almost psychotic sense of optimism even in the most dire circumstance (actors walking off set...refusing to do certain backdoor scenes etc) which only adds to the affection you feel for them by the end of the book!!
The only thing that slightly bogged the book down (i think) were the slightly lengthy asides the authors were prone to on the morality of making such a film...they obviously discovered it wasn't going to be the pg swashbuckling adventure they had imagined and it starts to take its toll on their conscience.
Anyway - in a nutshell - a great, funny, poigniant novel with a dark, shaddy and rather sexy underside. Its no catch 22 but give it a read just the same.
I wasn't disappointed. Read more
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