Craig Gross and Mike Foster, two ministers who have made it their calling to reach out to younger generations with warnings about the effects pornography, joined up with veteran porn producer Jimmy D recently to shoot a commercial aimed at keeping kids away from porn and encouraging adults who enjoy porn to act more responsibly.
The shoot will take place on Friday of this week at an undisclosed location, according to Jimmy D, the owner and producer of his own porn production company Sinamotion Pictures. Jimmy D is credited with directing and producing upwards of one hundred porn flicks during the span his 12-year career in the industry.
Jimmy D first met the two ministers at the 2002 AVN Expo in Las Vegas when the three men shared neighboring booths.
After launching their ministry XXXChurch.com two years ago, Gross and Foster were already acutely aware that in order to reach their target audience, they needed to hone their message alongside the porn industry.
But according to Jimmy D, he didn't remember meeting the two devout Christians until a year later when he heard about some trouble they ran into shooting a similar public service commercial titled "Porn Stunts Your Growth" that featured a cast of midgets. The venture backfired and ended up getting taken off the air when the Little People of America voiced its disapproval.
The incident with the midgets inspired Jimmy D to send the two crusaders an email with an offer to direct and produce their next commercial for free.
"Keeping kids away from porn? Who wouldn't be behind that," Jimmy D told XBiz. "We're not making this stuff for kids."
The commercial will star Pete the Porn Puppet, among a cast of other puppets, an idea that Jimmy D was not too crazy about at first.
"But then I read the script and saw where they were going with this thing," Jimmy D told XBiz. "It will be very controversial. Their whole thing is to go for the controversy because it gets them a lot of attention and it gets their message out there. If you get wacky with it, people are going to pay attention."
Gross told XBiz that the reason XXXChurch decided to go with a puppet theme for the commercial was because of the slim likelihood that it would piss anybody off.
"We're not trying to shut the porn industry down, Gross told XBiz. "We'd be stupid to try and do that. We're just trying to offer people the other side of the story. For many people, porn winds up causing a lot of problems."
Gross told XBiz that he and his partner got the idea for XXXChurch.com after seeing what little concern the Catholic church had for people with pornography addiction. Gross says that neither he nor Foster had a problem with porn themselves, but they had certainly been exposed and felt a need to do something about it.
"What the porn industry doesn't understand is that this stuff isn't for everyone," Gross said. "And while it isn't going to hurt everyone, it can hurt some people. From our standpoint, this is a call for kids to stay away from it, and if not, to be responsible with it."
The commercial will run nationwide as a public service announcement sometime in March, according to XXXChurch.com.
