There's no business like show business, and no business shows more than pornography. The elements of performance and role-playing at the heart of porn make it the perfect subject for dramatic treatment - and so, ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves for Pornography: the Musical, the latest offering from the people who brought you the award-winning Feltham Sings. It's got all the ingredients of the classic stage musical - pretty girls, catchy tunes, romance, heartbreak and spectacular set-pieces - but Annie it most definitely ain't.
The content of Pornography: the Musical is simple enough. A handful of women talk about their experiences in the adult industry, we see them at work, and then they sing specially written songs about their lives. In Feltham Sings, we heard young offenders expressing their rage, shame and fear; the songs lent articulacy to the inarticulate. Pornography: the Musical is a very different kettle of fish. Of the six women we meet, only one expresses any real misgivings about her choice of career; the rest of them, even those at the tougher end of the market, seem to be well and truly up for it.
Faye Rampton, a hearty, horsey sort of girl, specialises in "bukkake" parties - a practice based, apparently, upon a traditional Japanese punishment for unfaithful wives, in which a group of men stand round a single woman and masturbate in her face. Faye goes to work with the kind of enthusiasm that very few of us bring to our jobs. "I can't get enough sex," she says, regretting only that the shower facilities are far from adequate.
"I questioned Faye at length about her attitude to her work," says director Brian Hill. "I felt certain that she couldn't enjoy what she does, that there must be some reason why she's undergoing this kind of experience. But there was nothing: no messed-up childhood, no sense of pain or humiliation. She says she loves it, and she's certainly not being forced to do it. I suppose she just doesn't analyse it very much."
The most surprising thing about Pornography: the Musical is that hardly anyone has a bad word to say about the business. One gets the impression that Hill and his collaborator Simon Armitage, who wrote the lyrics to the songs, were expecting to make a much darker, more painful film, and were surprised by the breezy positivity of their subjects. "I have a pretty traditional attitude to porn," says Hill. "I think it's a corrosive force in society, it's exploitative and it gives men a skewed perception of what women are. But I made this film with an open mind, and I hope we've allowed the women to express what they really feel. I tried to find criticisms of the industry, but I didn't impose any where they didn't exist."
The most critical voice in the film is that of Kelly Cooke, an almost-retired porn star who's finding it hard to get out of the industry. We witness her comeback - a watersports movie shot in Germany in which Cooke gets thoroughly drenched, and bitterly regrets not wearing waterproof mascara. Yet even she doesn't seem particularly damaged by a 10-year career in porn. "It would be very shallow of me to turn round and bite the hand that fed me so well," says Cooke. "But I certainly feel damaged and tainted by porn. It's affected the way I view sex in personal relationships. After you've given so much of yourself to so many people, it's hard to have intimacy with just one person."
Cooke slipped into porn by degrees: waitressing led to topless waitressing which led to photographs and movies. In 1993, she was a Penthouse Pet of the Month, and lived a high-rolling lifestyle. "It's hard to keep your feet on the ground when you're earning a lot of money and being taken out by movie stars. It blinds you to what you're doing. But eventually, like an alcoholic, I had a moment of clarity and realised that I'd sunk really low. That's when I decided I had to get out." Cooke has regrets, but other than that doesn't seem deeply scarred by her experience. "I wish I'd never taken that first step, and I don't know what kept me sane for all those years other than the hope that I'd get out in one piece. But I've risen like a phoenix: I have a stable relationship now, I'm healthy - and I'm not about to jeopardise that."
Not all the women in the film are as articulate as Cooke, but none of them is stupid. They have a good understanding of what they are doing, they don't feel degraded by it, and they stress that they are doing it by choice. "I felt that these women were working in porn through desire rather than need," says lyricist Simon Armitage. "It's not like prostitution, where you're driven to it by dire necessity. They see themselves as part of the entertainment industry, and for me that element of performance, of enactment, is the heart of the film. These are not victims, like the kids in Feltham Sings, who enlist your sympathy as soon as they open their mouths. All of these women recognise in themselves an attraction to the porn industry, something that makes them natural performers. As a result, it's a much more divisive film. There's no black and white."
What you make of Pornography: the Musical depends entirely on your attitude towards the subject. If, like Hill and Armitage, you think that porn is generally a bad thing, then you will find certain scenes sad and sordid. Stripper Rebekah Jordan goes round the club collecting coins in a pint mug after her act; Armitage finds that "unbearably sad", but Jordan seems delighted with herself. "There's no commentary on these scenes, so you can make of them what you will," says Armitage. "Every so often, I got the feeling that there was a certain amount of denial going on, but that's for the viewer to decide. I'm quite moralistic; my background is counselling and social work, and I think of porn as a form of abuse. Working on this film hasn't really changed my mind, but I now recognise that there's a spectrum of experience and a spectrum of opinion."
"I'd say that we've made a very dark film," says director Brian Hill, "but not everyone will see it that way. I like that ambiguity, and I hope it will cause a lot of arguments. If you take what the women say at face value, then it's a positive picture - but I think the material speaks for itself. I want viewers to decide.
"When I hear a young woman talking about doing videos of fisting and asphyxiation, I have to wonder what it's doing to her - even if she says that she's having fun. I think people in the porn industry become institutionalised, and they stop questioning what they're doing. The money's pretty good, and they've escaped from the rat race; that's why it's so hard to give up. But you've got to wonder what happens to them when their time is up."
"The trouble with porn is that it's highly addictive," says Kelly Cooke. "The more you do, the easier it gets. It got to the point where I considered having sex the way most people consider getting a hamburger. But when you try to give it up - that's when you realise how addictive it is, both for the consumers and the performers. It's a class A drug, and it's hell coming off it."
· Pornography: the Musical will be broadcast on Channel 4 in September
