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I watched feats of sexuality that could only be described as psychopathic proctology, and not once did I hear them utter even a single line of my carefully crafted dialogue.

By Eric Spitznagel

Jun 5, 2002 | Canoga Park is a rarely visited graveyard where celebrity pool cleaners go to die. It's less a suburban oasis than an apocalyptic dustbowl, an unfathomably ugly San Fernando Valley sprawl of strip malls, factories and cul-de-sacs that can only boast affordable housing and a lower crime rate than Los Angeles. During the summer, the valley is always at least 10 degrees hotter, and exponentially more humid, than anywhere else in Southern California. From the moment you cross the border, it feels like you've ventured inside the mouth of a dog.

On the surface, you'd never know that this seemingly working-class neighborhood was actually the self-appointed capital of porn. Over three-fourths of the adult films produced in the free world come from the valley, and more production companies are moving there every day.

Porn probably thrives here because it would be unwelcome anywhere else. The porn industry and the valley have developed an unspoken symbiotic relationship that neither would admit. The valley's middle-class community, founded with the slogan "The Town That Started Right," saw itself evolve into "The Valley of Sin" without putting up so much as a snivel in protest. And why would they? For most of its existence, the valley was little more than a working-class refuge and a cheap source of water for Los Angeles. But ever since porn producers began setting up shop, it has turned into the epicenter of a flourishing, billion-dollar industry. While the production of feature films in Los Angeles has decreased almost 13 percent over the past decade, adult movie production is up 25 percent and rising. Americans regularly spend more than $8 billion a year on pornographic videos, an amount easily three times larger than all of Hollywood's domestic box office receipts.

That translates to rising employment. Porn productions bring as many as 20,000 new jobs to the valley each year. And those numbers don't just include the men and women having sex in front of the camera. Pornos employ cameramen, gaffers, grips and sound engineers, which leads to more homes being built and more money being spent at local businesses.

Porn producers have tried to be good neighbors by not flaunting their dirty secrets in public. While Hollywood's studios advertise their presence with glitzy overkill, porn studios are inconspicuous, if not totally invisible. There are almost 300 porn facilities within the valley limits -- including sound stages, editing facilities, and printing plants -- but they're hidden with such expertise that even their own neighbors couldn't identify them with any certainty.

Everybody gets rich. Everybody is happy. And it all happens behind closed doors, keeping the illusion of a moral community fabric alive and well. As much as I appreciated the beauty of this system, I was annoyed by how it inconvenienced me on a hot day in July. Finding a correct address is an almost impossible challenge. Forget a map, I needed a compass. It's not like I wanted a big flashing neon sign that screamed "PORN STUDIO," but would it have killed them to put a few numbers on the doors?

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