Money Shot

Money Shot chronicles the African American porn industry’s steady rise to the mainstream. Lawrence Ross, a prominent journalist and lecturer, details a year in the life of porn star Lexington Steele, whose eleven-inch penis and 75,000 per-movie-fee made him one of the most famous figures in the porn industry. Beginning and ending with Lexington Steele as the book’s narrative thread, Ross conducts hundreds of interviews with college professors, industry insiders, and porn stars themselves, providing an insider’s view of the often dangerous and disheartening reality of the black porn industry. His research uncovers a world fraught with sexual and racial politics. He describes an AIDS crisis that threatens the lives and careers of several black porn stars, the racism that implicitly prohibits interracial sex scenes in porn films, the moral implications of black female porn stars working as escorts to wealthy African Americans, and much more. Money Shot humanizes those who participate in a largely inhumane occupation,it is a cautionary tale for those who thought that what they are seeing on the screen is simply sex.