10 - Roberta Findlay vs. Porn Studies

Summary

This interview, edited and condensed for clarity, took place on September 21, 2021 at the Sear Sound studio in New York City. Whitney Strub and Roberta Findlay were at the studio, and Peter Alilunas joined over Zoom.

Whitney Strub What are your thoughts on having an academic collection of essays about your work?

Roberta Findlay I’ve had many interviews with various people. I’ve lost track of some of them, actually. I find it to be like psychotherapy. So, I do it because it’s head spinning. As far as your publishing an academic tome about my films, I can’t relate to that. I just can’t see it … they have no merit. The only remote merit that might occur is for First Amendment [battles] … that we fought here and there, but not much of it. But that’s about all I can think of. I don’t find any academic merit in any of this stuff. Later, as I went on and on, I thought the photography got pretty good. I called it “painting with light.”

Peter Alilunas What about all the people who had such a good time watching your films, do you think that there’s any merit in the pleasures that people had watching?

RF People have pleasure in reading cartoons, too. There’s all kinds of junk in the world that gives people pleasure. This is one of them.

WS If an academic book about your films is going to exist, what do you think should be in it? I know you don’t think it should exist at all, but if it’s going to exist, what would you include and what kind of angles, what kind of interpretations? What would you focus on?

WS She argues that the hardcore feature is like a musical, in a structural way.

RF Musical, exactly. To me an opera, because I’m a snob.

PA When you speak so eloquently about the operatic format of the films, there’s tons of merit to what you’re talking about.

RF Walter [Sear] and I got really fancy and went off the deep end and starting doing stuff that wasn’t good for sex pictures.