"I was born for porn," said US adult movie star Kyle Stone as he prepared to shoot the latest of his 1,000 or so hard-core films.
"So if I could sue the makers of Viagra I would, because I had a great career before they brought that stuff out. They almost ruined me," said the jovial red-headed actor, who describes himself as an "average-looking guy."
"After it came out a few years ago, all these new good looking, buff young `Viagra Boys' rode into town and my work was instantly cut in half. My phone stopped ringing," he lamented.
Stone, 38 -- who has been making skin flicks in the world capital of pornography, Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley for almost 10 years -- was one of just 20 to 30 porn actors who once dominated the highly lucrative industry.
In a multi-billion-dollar business in which female stars earn three to four times the salaries of male actors, Stone was one of the proud cornerstone's of the industry which once battled to find men who were able to "perform" in public.
Then came the miracle drug Viagra, introduced in 1998 by the US-based Pfizer corporation as a miracle cure to male impotence that could resurrect marriages plagued with sexual problems.
But while the drug was targeted at the private lives of ordinary men, it soon became a firm favorite in the very public pornography industry where insiders say up to 90 percent of new actors now use it to perform.
Viagra has had a skyrocketing effect on the numbers of men able to react adequately on the usually crowded, bustling and extremely unerotic sets of porn movies in this dowdy suburban epicenter of the global erotica industry.
The drug has left a stark division between the hard core of 20 to 30 "original" male porn stars who had carried the industry and their hundreds of often better-looking new rivals.
"I'm old school. I'm a natural exhibitionist who loves women and everything about them, so stimulation happens naturally," said Stone, a former filing clerk at a Los Angeles law firm who happened into the industry by accident.
"The `Viagra Boys' carry such big egos and care more about how they look than about the girl they are with.
"But male actors are just fillers for the guy at home, just set decoration. The girls are the stars, that's why they get paid more and that's the way it should be, despite what the `Viagra Boys' might think."
The drug is an alluring prospect for makers of the 10,000 or so porn films that helped generate more than US$4 billion in revenue for the industry last year as they can ensure that an average four-day shooting schedule is not thrown into disarray by the vagaries of the human body.
But while many porn directors appear to have embraced the "Viagra Boys" who are able to perform instantly, the drug has ironically been less popular with the female stars, as well as their "old-school" male counterparts.
"I don't like to work with anyone who uses Viagra because if they have to take it, you start to feel that you are not attractive enough or something," said 22-year-old actress Renee, who has been in the business for two years.
"You always know who is on Viagra because it makes them red in the face and in the chest, which is really ugly," she said, adding use of the drug also forces actresses to work longer hours because it delays the man's pleasure.
"I like to think that I'm attractive enough to interest a guy without him using Viagra to be with me," actress Rhiannon Brey said as she prepared to play opposite Stone in a scene of their movie Devinn Lane's Variety Show.
Veteran of 400 very rough films, Max Hardcore, 43, said the drug only helped actors who were "pre-disposed to performing publicly," but ultimately would not make an actor out of an eager amateur.
"The bottom line is that ... if you need to take a pill then its not the job for you," Kyle Stone said.
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