“Smut Capital of America” Restores the Sticky-Coated Veneer to SF’s Porn Past

Remember when Travis Bickle took Betsy to a porn theater for their first date in Taxi Driver? Yeah, apparently that was a thing back in the 70s. When the climate of the sexual revolution was its most heated, catching a porno flick was as natural to the dating ritual as the man picking up the check. Why is this so archaic? It’s got to be an effective litmus test for sussing out perverts — or for bringing them closer together.

Michael Stabile’s documentary short Smut Capital of America is about this very phenomenon. The eponymous capital is San Francisco — where else? — which by 1970 became the first city nationwide to allow hardcore pornography. The film screens this Sunday and will appeal to connoisseurs of all things NSFW.

Stabile restores the glamorous veneer of porn at its climax to our beloved city. What now seems to be but moment in our cultural memory was actually a golden age for San Francisco. The film features candid interviews with John Waters — my personal favorite filth-monger (NSFW) — and some of the period’s models, who all remember this roll-in-the-hay-day with deviant fondness.

You’ll also see some familiar splashes of local color, like Habib Carouba, who owns the Market Street Cinema, now a strip club. And of course, you’ll see naked people.

Like a chorus line of boners, smut screens popped up all through the Tenderloin. Through archival footage tinged with nostalgia, the film tells the story of how the Tenderloin was once the G-spot of pornography in the 70s — not quite yet an industry — rather than the seamy urban swamp you’re always just passing through. The Mitchell Brothers Theatre on O’Farrell was like the arthouse of porn before it (d?)evolved into its current incarnation.

“In the early 70s, sex was a lot newer,” says Smut cineaste Stabile, who got started by doing publicity for the SF porn industry.

“People didn’t know the mechanics of the way babies were born. There was a whole lot of interest in it… The Tenderloin was a vice district but it wasn’t dangerous in the same way. You had hustlers and you had prostitutes but you didn’t have the drugs and the homeless population.”

But porn didn’t stake its claim exclusively in the raw flesh of the Tenderloin. The Roxie, the Presidio and the Victoria all played dirty pictures before adopting perhaps more accessible fare. Though in most cases, the spirit’s still alive and, well, virile.

“In the beginning you had a bunch of hippies with cameras,” Stabile tells me. “They were sort of experimenting: How do we make money and at the same time make something entirely new. You had people that either came from film backgrounds or at least were creative in some general sense.” But this artistic approach to porn finished off by the 80s with that VCR whirligig, or, instant gratification in the form of a janky-ass box.

At 15 minutes — probably the amount of time it takes the average Joe Blo to blow his load — Smut Capital is a most satisfying quickie. And it’s being screened at the Victoria, a former burlesque theater, this Sunday at 11AM as part of the Frameline Film Festival’s “Only in San Francisco” documentary program.

Stabile debuted his film at Tribeca to massive success — he plans to turn it into a full-length feature eventually. So close the window on your PornTube, YouGasm, CumSock or whatever page is all the rage these days and step into a titillating time-wrap with Smut Capital of America.

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