Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

kosmasp So the movie tries to give us an insight into the life (or after-life?) of those who have done porn movies. Depending on your viewing habbits, you may be able to recognize people involved here. But even if you never heard of them, the documentary tells you what they've done and where they went from there. A nice touch is the ending bit, where you get a "where are they now"/"what are they doing now?".Some of it seems a bit negative, but it just may have to do with the people that got selected. I do wonder if Jenna Jameson was asked to do that. Arguably one of the most famous ones, who also has retired (although she has shown privately that she has gone off the rails). Well if you don't count Pamela Anderson, who might have (unwillingly?) pioneered the celebrity Sex tape thing. So if you are interested what people go through, after their career this is the first one to watch ...

Neddy Merrill Before we start, a quick nit - why the "Ends" in the title, it doesn't add any understand-ability and it sounds more dramatic without it. Anyway, the documentary which covers precisely the material as advertised could easily have been a NPR "Frontline" installment except for the spliced in footage of the subjects' past lives. Kudos to Bryce Wagoner for using that footage both sparingly and as archival material rather than wallowing in it to raise the titillation factor of the film. Also kudos for a balanced presentation between "actors" who suffered from their prior involvement with those who profited from it and those for whom it was just something they did for a living in the past like selling insurance or bookkeeping. Of course, this does take some of heat out of the proceedings and the film does allow the audience's minds to wonder on several occasions particularly during extended interviews. Also, the subject is limited: of course, most former stars will go on to some of a normal life while others will hang on to the industry given a lack of other employment options. In short, a tidy but limited documentary.

Greg Webster Over a dozen adult entertainment industry titans are interviewed for the documentary, including Asia Carrera, Nina Hartley, Mary Carey, Houston, Randy West, John Leslie, Amber Lynn, and Seka. If you're looking for something celebratory of the adult entertainment industry, go elsewhere. Dark and gritty at times, it's far from the most flattering look at the industry. Curious about the film and its sudden surge of popularity on Netflix, Poguide.com the director, Bryce Wagoner, to discuss why adult film starlets bow out of the business and end their careers. It's a complicated process with no easy individual answer. In short, Wagoner declares the age of the porn-star to be dead. "To be frank, you used to be able to have a relationship with these people over a number of years. Now it's 30, 40, 50 times a year you're going to see this person. You wouldn't want to see that over five years. And then audiences get tired of them and they're disposed of.

John Nail (ascheland) Changing careers is never easy, but it's even harder when your previous job includes starring in movies with titles like "Sorority Sex Kittens 3" and "Backstage Sluts," and doing anal is listed as a special skill. Bryce Wagoner's documentary, "After Porn Ends," interviews a variety of ex-porn stars to find out how they transitioned from adult video stardom to more mainstream lives. Real estate seems to be the preferred profession for a lot of them, though none of the women who went into that field—Houston, Raylene, Amber Lynn—stayed in it. Asia Carrera became a stay-at-home mom, while Crissy Moran and Shelley Lubben became born-again-Christians, renouncing their porn pasts. Self-employment is the easier path to building a life outside of porn: Randy West became a semi-pro golfer; the late John Leslie was a musician and painter (a pretty good one, too); and, perhaps the most interesting career switch, Tyffany Million (a.k.a. Sandra Margot) became a P.I. and bounty hunter. Seka is self-employed, but earns money from her website, capitalizing on her porn fame. Mary Carey used her porn notoriety to get some D-list recognition on reality shows and a couple publicity-grabbing runs for governor of California.Though "After Porn Ends" is fascinating, many of the stories start to sound alike. For the women, the narrative usually involves running away from an abusive family and battling drug and alcohol problems. For the men it's often a less complicated "Can you believe they PAY ME to have sex with all these women?" (Richard Pacheco recounts how he was contemplating studying to become a Rabbi when he was offered a part in a porn film. "It wasn't a tough decision," he says.) Though a good number of the former sex stars are fairly well-grounded – notably Pacheco, Leslie, Seka, Million – there is, predictably, a lot of sadness here. The pain is not always explicitly detailed and seldom explored, but it's usually visible. Just look at the eyes. Lubben, whose videography is so scant it barely justifies her inclusion in this documentary, and Moran seem to have psychological scars that go beyond their porn careers—scars that a devotion to God hasn't fully healed. As porn legend Nina Hartley observes: "A lot of people who are in porn have no business being in it." Besides the always enjoyable Hartley (I regret that her response to suggestions she enter politics can't be quoted here), former porn blogger Luke Ford and adult industry fixture William Margold offer insight to the pitfalls of life after porn. One of those pitfalls, it seems, is dealing with men like Ford and Margold, both of whom make it clear they don't have a high opinion of women in the industry (men in the X-biz are cool, though). Ford refers to women in porn as "prostitutes" and "hookers," and while starring in porn is similar, Ford's disdain is disingenuous. Margold at least acknowledges the hypocrisy of porn consumers looking down on adult video stars, but otherwise he's a Hawaiian shirt-wearing stereotype of a sleazy flesh peddler.Director Wagoner himself offers little insight, letting his subjects speak for themselves. On the surface this hands-off approach is a positive thing, preventing any moralizing or self-conscious sniggering, but there are several instances where I wished he'd asked follow-up questions, like when Lubben talks about how she and the man she eventually married got high on meth and discussed the bible(!), or when Mary Carey, the most vapid of the ex-porn stars, mentions that if she returned to porn she would, eventually, do a scene with a black man, seemingly implying an interracial scene is only a notch above gonzo porn.As other reviewers have mentioned, making a documentary about the lives of retired porn stars is so obvious it's amazing it hasn't been done before. Though Wagoner does a respectable job with "After Porn Ends," it's hardly definitive. There's room for this subject to be done again.