Bang Bus

BangBus.com

Industry	Internet pornography
Headquarters	Miami, Florida
Website	BangBus.com

Bang Bus is a reality porn website that is part of the Bang Bros network run by Kristopher Hinson and Penn Davis's company, Ox Ideas. The two are friends who attended school together.^[1] Greg Entner (known as "Sanchez" or "Dirty Sanchez") worked for the company as a scene director and camera operator and has appeared in most Bang Bus episodes. The videos, mostly 24–40 minutes long, are shot by Entner in Gonzo pornography style and are also known for their humorous approach.

The business is based on an insight^{[citation needed]} forged in the 1990s explosion in amateur porn: the viewing demographic strongly prefers material that effectively establishes plausible circumstances wherein otherwise far-fetched sexual adventures could happen to the viewer. Combining the mid-1990s growth areas of internet commerce and amateur pornography, an affiliate program (OxCash) and a gonzo cinematographic style were developed concurrently and combined with production values often missing in amateur porn of the time: professional-grade talent (attractive women, preternaturally-endowed men), proper lighting (originally confined to outdoor daylight shoots), and plausible storyline (as discussed above). Their success in combining those three Ps of porn production while maintaining an amateur feel was largely unprecedented.

The increased accessibility delivered by this novel combination has spawned a pornographic empire of sorts. In 2007, the Bang Bros. Network generated a sales total of 1.9 million dollars.^{[citation needed]} Despite a declining traffic trend since 2008^{[citation needed]}, its continuing popularity is attested to by a number of imitators.

Concept

Each video consists of a typical everywoman who is "picked up on the street," and is then persuaded to engage in sexual intercourse with a male actor in the back of a van (usually while it's driving) - the titular Bang Bus. Each storyline usually ends with the woman being dropped off unpaid and in the wrong location, shouting at the men as they drive off laughing. The series is shot primarily in Miami, Florida.

The Bang Bus usually contains three men: the driver (known as Ugly in early episodes), the camera man (Greg Entner aka "Dirty Sanchez"), and an actor who plays a "random" guy who gets to engage in sexual intercourse with the woman picked off the street. Sometimes the driver and camera man will randomly pick up a man first then pick up a woman and persuade the two to have sex. In most cases, the woman is convinced to get into the van under the guise that they are making a documentary about people in the area. They offer money, usually around a couple of hundred dollars, just to answer questions about their life. After some "interviewing", they usually offer more money to disrobe, and then additional money to have sex. The woman usually is persuaded to enter the van in less than 5 minutes, then persuaded to strip in 20–50 minutes and is dropped off in a random location after the completion of the sex act, ostensibly without being paid.

Although the theme of the site is the ease with which supposedly unknown women can be persuaded to engage in hardcore sexual acts, the videos are in fact staged and all the women shown are paid actresses.^[2][3] Some have gone on to work in other pornographic productions or even became regular performers. Despite this, Bang Bus is still somewhat controversial.

Controversy

On October 14, 2004, Miami New Times published an investigation of the site based primarily on interviews with a woman who performed for the site to pay for an abortion. She claimed that her ex-boyfriend, the father of the child, kept all of the payment.^[4]

On November 18, 2004, the South Florida news station and website WPLG ran a video segment and article revealing the staged nature of the videos,^[5] as admitted by a Bang Bus videographer. They also ran a follow-up in which they asked police whether the activities depicted on the Bang Bus site are illegal. The police responded that they were not, because the van's windows are tinted to avoid violation of indecent exposure laws and because the women consented.^[6]

In June 2005, BangBros., Inc., was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for violations of the CAN-SPAM Act, under which e-mailers must include the warning "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT" in the subject lines of all pornographic solicitations. It was reported that BangBros. settled the lawsuit for $650,000, having been found liable despite having hired third parties to perform such promotional activities. The company allowed its operations to be monitored to ensure compliance with this provision; four other companies were similarly fined in the action for a total of $1.6 million.

As of summer 2007, Entner no longer appears in the Bangbus updates.

Awards

Bang Bus was awarded "Best Amateur Release" and "Best Amateur Series" at the 2006 Adult Video News Awards.^[7] Bang Bus 9 won the 'Best Amateur Release' at the 2007 AVN awards.^[8] The series also won 'Best Gonzo Series' at the 2008 AVN awards, and 'Best Pro-Am Series' at the 2009 AVN awards.^[9][10]

References