Stacy Valentine is the Porn Star Next Door

Author's Rating:

Pros: An intelligent approach to the subject matter

Cons: Obvious content issues for some viewers

The Bottom Line: 
This level-headed and emotionally resonant portrait of the adult industry should please both for its insider standpoints and human dramas.

Author's Review
***Author's Note - Many of the reviews on this item seem to be about the 2004 comedy starring Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert.  My review, instead, is of Christine Fugate's 1999 documentary The Girl Next Door which is about adult film star Stacy Valentine.

Following several years in the life of porn star Stacy Valentine, The Girl Next Door attempts to shed light on a seemingly normal person who has wound up working in the sometimes seedy world of adult entertainment.  Christine Fugate's film is essentially a cinema verite piece as the camera follows Valentine around her everyday life, dealing extensively with her quests for love and companionship.  While Valentine gets paid to have sex, actual relationships generally seem elusive to her, not helped at all by her choice of profession.  Fugate's film paints Valentine as a tragic figure, someone who has a job that would be ideal-sounding to many people yet who can't seem to find true happiness.

During the course of the film, Valentine (real name Stacy Baker) talks about how she went from housewife in Oklahoma to being one of the most sought-after adult film actresses.  Despite spending only four years in the porn business, Valentine would become one of the industry's biggest stars and would travel the world in support of her career.  Eventually, Valentine starts to have doubts about her ability to continue in the business, due mainly to her instability in her "real life."  Valentine is given plenty of opportunity to voice her opinion and tell the camera how she feels at various times; in many ways, it's remarkable how candid she is, particularly when discussing her concerns about her on-and-off romantic relationship with a male porn star. 

The Girl Next Door works largely as a study on how involvement in the adult business affects a person.  While Stacy Baker describes herself as shy, her persona as Stacy Valentine seems to crave notoriety and fame at all costs, being vindicated only when she wins one of the adult industry's yearly performer awards.  This behavior is completely at odds with a scene that finds Baker having a tearful reunion with her mother, eventually realizing that her mother is really the only constant figure in her life; she's completely lonely and very much alone while at her home on the west coast. 

At several points during the film, Valentine is seen getting some sort of cosmetic surgery, eventually reducing her enhanced bust size, getting liposuction and lip injections.  One could probably make an argument that this film attempts to show how women are objectified by the adult industry; Valentine expresses concerns about how her involvement in the industry has made her not even recognize herself due to her frequent trips to the plastic surgeon.  While this element does make for some thought-provoking moments in the film, it's never really focused on, being more an afterthought than a focal point for the work.

One amazing thing about this story is that most of the people presented here seem well-adjusted.  This is pretty refreshing since many portraits of adult industry stars show them as perennially screwed up.  Stacy Valentine, while having some problems with regard to her personal life, seems perfectly okay with her lifestyle and, perhaps more surprising, her parents do as well.  There's a moment when Valentine's parents give their opinions of their daughter's occupation that is quite revealing, essentially pointing out that there's a lot worse for a person to do than get paid to have sex. 

The Girl Next Door is probably one of the best portraits of the adult industry due mainly to its refusal to pass judgement on its subjects.  I have to say that this portrait of a porn actress is a lot more successful than Gough Lewis's Sex: The Annabel Chong Story in that the film seems mostly objective and doesn't come across as manipulative.  Fugate also chooses to present the sensational material in the film in a level-headed and matter of fact manner that neither overly-glamorizes its subjects nor seems exploitative.

As would be expected in a film about the adult industry, The Girl Next Door has graphic sexuality and nudity, constant sexually-oriented language, as well as some graphic surgery footage.  The film provides almost a who's who of the adult industry; sharp-eyed viewers will see numerous notable personalities in the peripherals of the film.  While there are some sleazy characters lurking in this piece, I have to say that Fugate (and maybe Valentine) have avoided the seedy porn underground.

The DVD of this film from Indican Pictures has bonus footage of Stacy's retirement party in 2000, a couple of deleted scenes, and some promotional material.  This bonus footage is not particularly interesting, but the documentary itself pretty much says it all.

Tightly edited into a riveting and engrossing film, The Girl Next Door is a very affecting and emotionally relevant documentary portrait of one of the adult industry's biggest stars.  It's really the way this film paints its subjects as all-too-human that makes this one of the most authentic and poignant documentaries about the porn business.  Those familiar with the subject will probably appreciate this insider look at the modern day porn business, and I'd have to say that (sexual content aside), the average audience probably would be engrossed by the human drama presented by Christine Fugate's film.