Okay, here we got "Adult Video News Awards 1995" and the title gives away two crucial pieces of information. 1) This is from the year 1995, so had its 25th anniversary this year. 2) These are the Oscars for the adult film industry you could say. This is porn, no matter how professional "adult video news awards" may sound. This was a really long show as it came relatively close to the 2.5-hour mark in fact. And this does not even include commercials. This means the entire show back then probably ran for three hours. Massive. As massive as Ron Jeremy's filmography. Well, he is in the headlines in 2020 as well, but for other reasons. Quite a shame as he seemed really likable and liked and respected by pretty much everybody for decades really. So he was part of this show already too. This shows you how long he has been in the industry. As for other people still performing today in this field, there are not really too many in here. If any at all. I must say I am definitely not an expert. But to show you how much times has passed since then, this was from around the time when "Schindler's List" came out. Yep, I made a connection between this Spielberg classic and an adult film awards ceremony. And I have no shame doing so. Or regrets. But yeah, to make it even more obvious, you can say that one out of three (approximately) people who lived back then are not alive anymore today. By the way, I do not despise this industry by any means. Or the movies it produces. They are commercially successful enough to get made and if people want to star in them, then they have every right to do so and should not be judged. I still find it a bit sad that not really anybody from this industry manages a career in non-adult film afterwards, but it is what it is I suppose. Exceptions are really rare. We have one Turkish/German actress here in my country who made it really big, won German Film Awards even and I am glad she did because she is really good and I refuse to believe that all the adult film actors back then and today are not good enough, regardless of if we are speaking about those form America or any other region on the planet. Alright, no back to this one: The director and producer is S. Marco DiMercurio and, according to imdb, he worked on some other editions of this event in the past, namely the ones in 1993 and 1994 as well in both fields. So this may be his niche and I have a feeling that maybe his body of work here on imdb is not complete really and he may have more credits to him than you can find listed here. One thing he is apparently not is a writer. There have been many writers nonetheless for this show and it is not unusual. Awards shows have more than one or two writers almost all the time, also more harmless awards shows. The BETs have had ten or so. I will spare you the names of thoe we got here. Feel free to check the list yourself if you care. As for the people you see in front of the camera here (I hesitate to call them cast because that is not what they are, even if some of them may be playing a role), I already stated with the Jeremy reference that I am not familiar with too many there. Not today when it comes to adult films and certainly not back then when I was ten years old. Sadly, a handful of those are also no longer with us. Apparently more males than females, but it makes kinda sense because males are more active in this industry when it comes to people over 40 compared to women and of course the ones behind the camera who are older anyway most of the time are also predominantly males. Today and back then an even higher percentage probably. As for the winners, again no preferences or bias for me here. It seems a film with the simple, yet telling title "Sex" stole the show that night and another one who won several trophies is called "Dog Walker". I am sure if you want to watch these, there are ways to find them and they still exist somewhere, maybe in the sleazy video store next door, but if not there, then at least online. 1995 is not 1920.
Alright, yeah this is by far not the first edition of this award show that I have seen in the past and I will just compare it to some other (more recent) shows now. First of all, you can see howw old this is by the intro really, like the message that is told the audience. People were definitely mfar more careful with adult content back then than they are today. They are almost warning the audience that they are about to see explicit stuff, yet the actors all consented. This was pretty funny by today's standards in an unintentional way. Definitely unintentional. They were 100% serious with that. Another thing that has been pretty common in recent shows for a while now is that when the camera catches the audience, the performers there, the women frequently show their breasts when they are in the spotlight. This did not happen back then yet. Today it is a bit of an appetizer I suppose and we do see some nudity on the stage too, but that is mostly cleavage and compared to today's openness, it is as prude and harmless as it gets. I mean the two women near the end back then with the see-through clothes on the upper part of their body were telling enough, but this was really as explicit as it got on the stage for 1995. Absolutely nothing compared to the 2010s and what is depicted there. Is it a sexual revolution too? Up to you to decide. Sounds a bit too powerful maybe. I do not really oppose it though the way it was back then. Sometimes less can be more and you see enough sex and nudity anyway in those videos that belong to the winning movies. There is a parallel we got compared to what the show looks like today. These sequences I just mentioned are usually really, really long. Way longer than at the Oscars for example the short clips for every actor. Then again, this cannot really be compared because here I am talking about scenes from the winning movies and there are none I think at the Oscars. The winner just enters the stage. One thing that is (for whatever reason) common today at the AVN Awards is that they have so many nominees in some categories, like 15 or so, way too many honestly, and back then, this was not yet the case apparently. It was just five per category most of the time and I certainly like that more. With how it is these days, they do not even mention all the nominees at times and that would be a complete no-go for me. As for the "hotness" (let's call it that) of the scenes shown here, it as alright. I mean it wasn't perfect, but I would definitely not say that camera work, acting etc. were worse back then than they are today. And the girls are not less attractive either. Maybe the fact that they were less confident than the actresses today made them even more desirable at times. But that is just my take on things of course and entirely subjective. Just as subjective as my perspective that the action you see from the films in the first half of these almost 150 minutes would turn on people more than what you get to see in the second half. I liked some stuff I saw there. But above everything positive I'm mentioning here, there is one reason that really turns this into a weak watch and this is (as I mentioned more than once already) the running time. The duration of the entire thing. Sorry, but 2.5 (or 3 with commercials) house is absolutely not fitting at all for this kind of event. I am generally one who says that each and every category deserves to be included in the ceremony and I still stand with that, but maybe fewer categories would have been a better solution in fact. It dragged a lot at times. And even those who watch it not for informative purposes as I did, but because they are simply horny, would not want to have a boner for three hours. This is one area, however, where they improved in the coming years. There are other shows that are also this long, but I think it is definitely the minority and most of them made it to 90 minutes max, which is perfectly fine. But here they really put it all in (no pun intended). There is not even a music performance the way they got actually successful and famous recording artists to perform in the last 15 years or so. Frequently these musicians were far more famous than everybody else you see during the broadcast, so this is not a taboo for singers by any means either. Which is good. Honestly, everybody watches some kind of porn and nobody must be blacklisted because of that or so. Also another reason why this one felt so endless was probably that they did not yet have a comedian host the show, which also made for some entertainment when it comes to editions from the 21st century. So they did improve for sure. In some key areas. There is no way I can give this one here more than one star out of five, even if it has an okay moment here and there. Had it been an hour shorter, I may have given two. It's still a somewhat interesting watch for historical reasons perhaps. I mentioned a lot already, but let me emphasize the intro again briefly. Overall, I still think it's definitely best to skip the ceremony altogether and watch something else instead. Not recommended.
Alright, yeah this is by far not the first edition of this award show that I have seen in the past and I will just compare it to some other (more recent) shows now. First of all, you can see howw old this is by the intro really, like the message that is told the audience. People were definitely mfar more careful with adult content back then than they are today. They are almost warning the audience that they are about to see explicit stuff, yet the actors all consented. This was pretty funny by today's standards in an unintentional way. Definitely unintentional. They were 100% serious with that. Another thing that has been pretty common in recent shows for a while now is that when the camera catches the audience, the performers there, the women frequently show their breasts when they are in the spotlight. This did not happen back then yet. Today it is a bit of an appetizer I suppose and we do see some nudity on the stage too, but that is mostly cleavage and compared to today's openness, it is as prude and harmless as it gets. I mean the two women near the end back then with the see-through clothes on the upper part of their body were telling enough, but this was really as explicit as it got on the stage for 1995. Absolutely nothing compared to the 2010s and what is depicted there. Is it a sexual revolution too? Up to you to decide. Sounds a bit too powerful maybe. I do not really oppose it though the way it was back then. Sometimes less can be more and you see enough sex and nudity anyway in those videos that belong to the winning movies. There is a parallel we got compared to what the show looks like today. These sequences I just mentioned are usually really, really long. Way longer than at the Oscars for example the short clips for every actor. Then again, this cannot really be compared because here I am talking about scenes from the winning movies and there are none I think at the Oscars. The winner just enters the stage. One thing that is (for whatever reason) common today at the AVN Awards is that they have so many nominees in some categories, like 15 or so, way too many honestly, and back then, this was not yet the case apparently. It was just five per category most of the time and I certainly like that more. With how it is these days, they do not even mention all the nominees at times and that would be a complete no-go for me. As for the "hotness" (let's call it that) of the scenes shown here, it as alright. I mean it wasn't perfect, but I would definitely not say that camera work, acting etc. were worse back then than they are today. And the girls are not less attractive either. Maybe the fact that they were less confident than the actresses today made them even more desirable at times. But that is just my take on things of course and entirely subjective. Just as subjective as my perspective that the action you see from the films in the first half of these almost 150 minutes would turn on people more than what you get to see in the second half. I liked some stuff I saw there. But above everything positive I'm mentioning here, there is one reason that really turns this into a weak watch and this is (as I mentioned more than once already) the running time. The duration of the entire thing. Sorry, but 2.5 (or 3 with commercials) house is absolutely not fitting at all for this kind of event. I am generally one who says that each and every category deserves to be included in the ceremony and I still stand with that, but maybe fewer categories would have been a better solution in fact. It dragged a lot at times. And even those who watch it not for informative purposes as I did, but because they are simply horny, would not want to have a boner for three hours. This is one area, however, where they improved in the coming years. There are other shows that are also this long, but I think it is definitely the minority and most of them made it to 90 minutes max, which is perfectly fine. But here they really put it all in (no pun intended). There is not even a music performance the way they got actually successful and famous recording artists to perform in the last 15 years or so. Frequently these musicians were far more famous than everybody else you see during the broadcast, so this is not a taboo for singers by any means either. Which is good. Honestly, everybody watches some kind of porn and nobody must be blacklisted because of that or so. Also another reason why this one felt so endless was probably that they did not yet have a comedian host the show, which also made for some entertainment when it comes to editions from the 21st century. So they did improve for sure. In some key areas. There is no way I can give this one here more than one star out of five, even if it has an okay moment here and there. Had it been an hour shorter, I may have given two. It's still a somewhat interesting watch for historical reasons perhaps. I mentioned a lot already, but let me emphasize the intro again briefly. Overall, I still think it's definitely best to skip the ceremony altogether and watch something else instead. Not recommended.