San Fernando

Went to a premiere in Berlin last night for a documentary called 9to5: Days in Porn, shot by a Munich director named Jens Hoffmann. He spent a year and a half in San Fernando Valley following the industry—cameras rolling on porn sets, the work, the repetition, the money. Sasha Grey was in it.

Bastian found it dead boring. He said it felt like German television, one of those earnest Sunday-afternoon reports about ordinary jobs that’s supposed to make you think. The kind of program you’d stumble on between game shows. He wasn’t wrong, exactly.

I didn’t mind it. Some of it was funny by accident, some of it was just interesting to watch. I spent most of my time watching Sasha Grey, not really thinking about the filmmaker’s point or what he was trying to say about the industry. Just looking at her. That was enough.

Bastian was probably right that it wasn’t saying anything new. But I got something else out of it, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. We walked out without really talking about it. He was ready to move on. I was still thinking about what I’d been watching.

Apparently she has something called Sasha Grey’s Anatomy now. I probably won’t watch it. But I’ll remember sitting in that cinema while Bastian checked his phone and I didn’t, while we saw the same film and came away with completely different things.