In 2004 Timothy Greenfield-Sanders released his photography book XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits, which showed various porn stars in two states, wearing clothes and not wearing clothes. If you want to see Christy Canyon, Ron Jeremy, and Jenna Jameson photographed by a first-rate contributor to Vanity Fair, then you should definitely get ahold of this book.

In addition to the pics, XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits also features written contributions by people like John Malkovich, Lou Reed, and Gore Vidal as well as an interview of Chi Chi Larue conducted by (who else?) John Waters.

Ever-savvy HBO, seeing an opportunity for an interesting bit of programming, commissioned an hour-long documentary by Greenfield-Sanders about the creation of his book; the program was called Thinking XXX. Unusually, HBO put out a DVD of the show called Thinking XXX: Extended Cut, which featured extras, as DVDs are wont to do.

Somehow Greenfield-Sanders amusingly managed to get Lou Reed into a recording studio in order to read a whole bunch of super-nasty porn ad copy, and there’s a five-minute video on the DVD showing Reed reading the text into a microphone. (Note that Reed does not follow exemplary voiceover technique by inserting a toothpick into the side of his mouth for the entirety of the session.)

This content requires a warning, and here it comes. The text Reed is speaking aloud clearly comes from a multitude of sources, and almost all of it is quite abhorrent—in actuality the entire video is (in effect) a vivid reminder of what an ugly world we live in. The people who make porn know how to get men (for the most part) interested in their offerings, and it sure seems like a large portion of the “appeal” revolves around demeaning or harming women. The “XXX” here really means something, and if you’re anywhere near an office cubicle, you’d be advised to think hard before pressing play.

Having said that, it’s really the contributions of Reed that make this clip so worthwhile. It’s definitely a trip to watch the man who wrote about Candy giving head in “Walk on the Wild Side” to intone absurd phrases like “I like it in the bum-bum!”

It seems that Greenfield-Sanders inserted the word “Lou” into the copy a few times, and every time Reed runs into one, he makes the most of it. A couple of times Reed breaks off laughing because the copy is just so ridiculous. After one torrent of raw verbiage he starts laughing and says “That’s beyond—that’s so awful. Even for me!”
 

 
via Eric Alper