Ma & Pa Porn — Day 22
Genre: Comedy
Premise: Bill and Adelle own a video rental store in small New England town. They opened the store when they were just 25-year-old sweethearts, 35 years ago, and married a year later. The first 20 years the video store was a booming business. But over the last 15 years, the rise of DVD by mail, followed by online streaming have reduced their income to nil and decimated their savings. Now, Bill and Adelle are almost 60, too broke to retire, and have no skills other than running their small store.
The only other person working in the store with Bill and Adelle is 20 year old Clementine, a plucky local girl who opted to skip college, and instead took a job in the video store after high school so she could feed her addiction to film and watch movies all day.
On Adelle's 60th birthday the couple receive a final foreclosure notice from the bank. Completely bereft, they sit down to let Clementine know that they will have to shut the store the following month, and let her go. They all cry together, and then begin talking about how times have changed. What DOES make money these days, the couple ask young Clementine. "Well, porn is still quite popular," she shrugs. "I'm sure that's lucrative." The couple smile at her answer but sheepishly set her straight: even porn doesn't sell anymore. The couple has a small porn section, about 10 DVDs in the back of the store, but nobody even comes in to rent those anymore. "Oh nobody PAYS for porn anymore," Clementine corrects them, "It's all free, on the internet. And there are more porn movies made and uploaded by amateurs every day than there are Hollywood films from the last 100 years." She jumps behind the counter and pulls up some of her brothers' favorite websites. The couple is blown away at the volume, raunchiness and lack of profit from it all!
But then, as the three of them stand watching and cringing together, they start offhandedly critiquing the clips they see—not for content, but for craft. "Oh the light in this one is terrible," says Adelle, "They're definitely using the wrong lens to show this guy's genitals," says Bill, "and the camera man needs to take about three steps backwards. I have no idea what I'm looking at right now. That's not sexy." "Oh no!" cries Clementine, "an Iris Slow Wipe for a scene transition? What is this, 1975?! And the continuity and dialog are TERRIBLE...!" After about an hour of this, their banter and confidence building together, they close the browser and stare at each other in shock.
"What if we start a film school?" offers Adelle. "...A PORN film school." "But how do we make money?" asks Bill. "We just watched more free sex in an hour than I've had in a lifetime. Everybody is getting laid, but nobody is getting paid." "It doesn't matter," Clementine chimes in."Think about it. Part of the reason these videos are all so bad is because they are being shot by amateurs. Amateurs with zero film training. There are 30,000 people in this town. I'll bet 5,000 of them have filmed each other having sex. We don't have to make money on the internet. We just charge the local couples who want to learn enough film tricks to make better home sex movies. We have plenty of room in the back of the store to set up a private film studio / classroom.... And between the three of us we've got more filmic knowledge and knowhow that the entire Senior class of NYU."
And so the three begin an entirely new business together out of the back of Bill and Adelle's tiny video store. It's a slow start, and they have to max out Clementine's credit cards to push the bank off another few months. But soon business is booming. Booming enough that the rest of the town and the city council and eventually the media all take notice. As the money and infamy pile up, can the three survive their own success—and stay out of jail in the process?