Powerful Peep Show: 'Naked Amibition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry' on DVD

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AT ONE POINT in Michael Grecco's documentary on the world of porn, actress and director Joanna Angel says, "Nobody feels lukewarm about pornography. They either love it or they hate it."

And though Grecco's film, "Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry," certainly sympathizes with the members of that world, it's not just fluff. Instead, Grecco tries to get to the bottom of a subculture churning out $12 billion a year, and in doing so, he creates a relatable narrative and exposes personal stories that make the industry, its participants and supporters seem far less superficial than you would expect.

Grecco, a photojournalist who worked for The Boston Herald and the Associated Press before transitioning into celebrity portrait work, started with the idea of creating a coffee-table book about the porn industry that "people would actually put on their coffee table."

But the key to capturing what he describes as a "bizarre, outrageous, just Fellini-esque" subculture is to look for the motives and personalities within the people involved — not just the physical acts themselves — and to do it in a "tasteful way." So Grecco decides a visit to the 2006 Adult Video News convention in Las Vegas, which also includes the annual AVN Awards, is the way to go.

There, he'll have three days to capture both the porn world and its fans, and though it's a "scary-short time frame," at least everyone will be at one place. As a result, the documentary — which Grecco narrates in first-person — is a look at those three days, the people he meets and the photos he takes, which vary from portraits of recognizable names such as Angel and Ron Jeremy to everyday convention-goers, such as a guy who has a female slave he touts around, to vendors showing their wares, including Matt McCullen, creator of the Realdoll, and David Lee, a Japanese aerospace engineer who designed guidance systems for missiles by day and developed the Tender Lover sex toy by night.

As Grecco notes, "I was fascinated more with the creator than the creation — someone who would rather design a sex machine than a war machine," and his sense of wonder at the people he meets during those three days often mirrors the viewer's own.

Though the documentary doesn't show any actual sexual acts, it's still rated R, so prepare yourself for fake silicone breasts, realistic female dolls, bondage gear and countless sex toys made out of everything from plastic to glass — all the kinds of things you would squeal at in real life. But for the 40,000 attendees and 400 exhibitors at the convention who are "showing and buying everything adult," this is just fair game, and interviews with vendors such as Please Her shoes and Phallix Glass sex toys make it clear that they're just giving the public what they want.

And the other thing the public, and Grecco himself, wants is a chance to get up close and personal with various adult film stars. As he commands his production assistants to pull anyone from the convention that seems interesting, the documentary focuses on Sunny Lane, an actress who has only been in the industry for 11 months, and Angel, the "punk rock princess" of porn who got noticed by the industry because of her own hardcore website, BurningAngel.

Both Lane and Angel are nominated for the Best New Starlet AVN award, and Grecco immediately creates a bond with both of them: They are proud of their careers and also willing to discuss their personal lives, such as Lane's attempt to make it big as a figure skater before a surgical procedure dashed her dreams and Angel's relationship with her mother. For the viewer, their narratives and the suspense of whether either of them will win the Best New Starlet award will keep you invested.

That is, of course, if you're not already drawn in by Grecco himself. With a background in news photography, he's not willing to settle for a glossy still. His encouragement of the actors, actresses and fans to go deeper than the typical finger-in-the-mouth pose helps create more revealing looks at these figures — even if some of the descriptions of the characters are outdated, such as actress Tera Patrick and rock star-turned-actor Evan Seinfeld, who are no longer married. A lot can happen in four years.

Regardless, as Grecco struggles to find the perfect moment for his book, determined to get pictures of icons such as Larry Flynt and Jenna Jameson, you begin to emphasize with his declaration of, "I don't simply want to take a picture. I want to take a picture that tells a story."

Based on the magnetism of the "Naked Ambition" documentary, he's succeeded.

Written by Express contributor Roxana Hadadi