Interview: Part One

I'm very excited about today's post: I recently conducted an email interview with Richard, the man behind Beautiful Agony, IShotMyself, and IFeelMyself, and several other exciting sites. Richard and his team are responsible for some of the most creative, inspired new approaches to online erotica that I have ever seen. Running all these spectacular sites must make for a pretty busy schedule, but he managed to find some time to answer a few of my questions, and I am thrilled to be able to reproduce them for you here. So without further ado:


The Pornoisseur: Of course the obvious first question: Whence came the inspiration for Beautiful Agony? It is such a unique idea- what's the story behind the epiphany, and how did the site first get off the ground?

Richard: We had been working on ishotmyself for about a year and I was talking one day to a friend of mine, Lauren, about the state of porn. The previous night my partner and I had been to an adult store and could not find a single video which looked even remotely erotic. Lauren had similar experiences, but as a recent arts graduate, she had another perspective, somewhat more analytical. We had a reductionist discussion which came to the conclusion that really, the eroticism is mostly in the face, and it stood to reason that you could make porn with no nudity. So we passed a video camera around amongst a few friends and ISM contributors, and the ISM designer whipped up a simple, but elegant site. We emailed a few people around the net for a reaction, and they talked it up on their blogs and such, and pretty soon we had interest from major sites like Nerve.com. And so it snowballed; we started accepting contributions through the site, and increased the number of updates to 5 per week. It has been very successful, even by porn standards, or so it seems.


TP: Was BA your first project in the erotica/sexual-art/porn genre, or had you prior experience in the field? I'm interested in how you got into this particular business- not a job that you can generally find in the help-wanted classifieds. Did you ever have qualms about devoting so much time to something that some people will inevitably see as not respectable?

R: Our fist foray into this field, as a company, was ishotmyself, but I had done some creative work for another web site a couple of years earlier. That's where I learned a little about how things work on the internet. At the time I was working in a 'regular' business but found it increasingly frustrating, uninspiring, and long hours for little return. In retrospect I can see that I'd been stifling ideas my entire life, following conservative lines instead. No matter how ethically you approach an adult business there will always be people who put labels on what you do. I find it ironic that an executive for a tobacco company would probably be welcomed in many places I would not.

TP: How has Agony changed over the years? Have you let it evolve or kept it as much the same as possible?

R: The basic credo of all our sites is reality, so we're loathe to do anything which would interfere with the natural process that's happening in front of the camera. That means we've resisted the temptation to build a studio and streamline the process, or 'direct' the participants to do particular things in particular ways, to cater to niches or fetishes. But that doesn't mean the site is stagnant by any means; last year we added 'Confessions', short exit interviews where we ask the particupants to shake out their dirty laundry for us. We're finding those are often just as fascinating as the Agony videos themselves.


TP: How do you define the terms 'erotica' and 'pornography', and where do you think Beautiful Agony fits into those categories?

I think porn aims straight for the groin, where erotica aims for the mind. On Agony, most of the stimulus is coalescing inside your own head, so it is certainly erotica; but I sometimes call it hardcore porn as well, because of the ultimate effect it has on the audience. Our members are polarised largely into 2 groups; those who have used porn for years, progressing through more and more hardcore levels until they're jaded by the whole thing; and then, they discover Agony, and it's like a rebirth for their mojo. The other group are 'virgins', those who have never joined an adult site before, and women comprise a large part of this group I think.

To be continued...

Click if you're looking for nude photographs...