The world of adult entertainment changed radically with the advent of inexpensive video equipment that made it possible for mom and pop on a Saturday night after a six pack or three to turn the lights on instead of out and point the camera at their bed while they had sex. All of a sudden, making porn was literally and of course figuratively in the hands of the people. The very first company to see some sort of marketing potential in those homemade sex tapes was a little company in San Diego back in 1982 that called itself “Homegrown Video”.

Homegrown established itself as the original company to distribute those erotic home videos. The original owner, Greg Swaim, owned a video store by day but led an active swinging lifestyle when the work day was over. As a response to the crappy porn titles he felt that he was ripping his customers with in the little back room of his store, he decided to start renting footage from the local swing parties. Customers wanted more. Rentals were not enough. People had to have those videos in their permanent xxx collections. So Greg started selling the footage. Customers could tell by the plain white paper cover which was simply a black and white copy sheet with a few blurry pictures and some text that read like a field report from a foreign correspondent. “Lighting, sound are ok, action starts with Bob licking Mary’s cunt, then Joe puts the camera on a tripod so he can jump in and give Mary more cock to play with…” and “Mary is decent looking and sort of plump but has a great attitude”. What you saw was what you got.

That was a huge change for customers used to picking up big glossy covered VHS tapes that featured a gorgeous model who invariably once the customer got home and popped the tape in the player would find her missing from any action in the video. Homegrown Video proved that consumers of adult material didn’t care about ridiculously bad acting and atrocious scripts. They would put up with bad lighting and sound as long as the sex play was authentic and un-rehearsed. Reality was better than any puffed hair sprayed coif starlet, more interesting than any uber-enhanced proto female trying to act like she was enjoying herself with some bored stiff dude still wearing his gym socks.

Soon, every company in Porn Valley U.S.A was trying to emulate, simulate, or if worse came to worse eradicate those so-called “amateur” videos. Many companies have come and gone. Homegrown Video has remained and earned the distinction quoted from Newsweek magazine of being “the longest running series in the history of porn”. Now, in the internet age of adult entertainment, the majority of content available to an un-ending appetite for porn, has primarily focused on the amateur niche. Call it ”reality”, or “amateur”, “Gonzo” or “homemade” but realize no matter what name it goes by it is all based on what made those first Homegrown Videos so popular, real sex, authenticly unrehearsed and reasonably unbridled. Sometimes hot, sometimes not, but without a doubt, beauty and arousal were in the eyes and the libido of the beholder.