Thanks to the Internet and the bounty of slap and tickle a single mouse click can provide, we tend to take pornography for granted. The documentary short Smut Capital of America (showing Sunday at Frameline in San Francisco) reminds us that our nation was not always so welcoming towards gleeful hedonism, interviewing select porno-neers (and devotee John Waters) about the days of the late ’60s and early ’70s, when the only safe place for purveyors of prurience was the sailor-swamped, hustler-filled streets of San Francisco. Peddling books, movies and live shows, pornographers were caught between the rock of McCarthyistic government intrusion (one porn house endured 52 police raids in a single week) and the hard place of a customer base in the throes of the very sexual revolution their product was spurring. Your browser history will tell you which side prevailed, but the inevitability doesn’t undermine Smut – it’s still the most titillating American history lesson we’ve ever gotten.
