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The AVN Awards is the biggest award ceremony for the adult entertainment industry. It is often compared to the Oscars. The Oscars honor the previous year’s star performers and films in a glittering ceremony in a gala extraordinaire. The porn industry, in contrast, has its own version of the Oscars that celebrates the biggest star performers and films of the X-rated industry—The Adult Video News Awards that took place on Saturday, January 27 in Las Vegas.
In total, 75 awards were handed out. They included; Best Boy/Girl Sex Scene, Best 3-Way Sex Scene, Best Big Butt Movie, Best Male Newcomer, Best Taboo Relations, Best Group Sex Scene, Best Orgy Gang Bang Movie, BBW Performer of the Year, Best Anal Series, Best Older Woman/Younger Girl Movie, Best Polyamory Movie, Best Transsexual Movie, Best Virtual Reality Sex Scene and Best Fetish Manufacturer. Let’s take a closer look at these awards.
Selecting winners
You must be wondering, just how does the adult film industry’s biggest award ceremony choose its award winners? Well, with stiff competition for places in the winning list, it is perhaps surprising that AVN has only 30 voters. Apparently, this is to zero down the winners. This is in complete contrast to the Oscars, where, for instance, the winner of the “Best Picture” is decided after all 7,258 members of the Academy put in their vote. Before we look into how it went down, let us see how the AVN selects its list of 75 winners and how the adult cinema’s biggest award ceremony comes into shape.
With the AVN being the ears and eyes of the porn industry, it has all information related to the XXX world— from sex toys to porn companies, AVN’s current 20-plus staffers have been hailed as experts about everything related to porn.
The process of choosing the nominees starts from October, with nine staffers (5 men and four women) meet at the AVN offices in Chatsworth, California, to prepare a list of nominees. That is not to say it is an easy task, far from it. Choosing nominees from 10,000 movies and scenes that are submitted to AVN in September is no walk in the park. The panel has to watch porn all day long for months, which might sound exciting, except that it is not.
According to AVN senior editor Peter Warren, “You can start watching something and three seconds into it go, ‘This is terrible, let’s move on,’” he explained. There are times when the panel fast forwards a film, and they go like ‘OK, this looks pretty good, let’s slow it down a little bit.’ It is clearly not as easy or as much fun as it sounds. Watching porn the whole day for months can make a person’s nerves get thinner, and the panelists are sometimes on edge, and it gets heated sometimes, says Warren.
Females get preferential treatment
It is an open secret that the AVN awards laud female performers more than their male counterparts. The “Female Performer of the Year” for instance, commands more respect than its male version. The reason given for this is because porn is primarily made to entertain men, and there are also a fewer number of men found in the industry. To demonstrate that point, Mick Blue had won the “Male Performer of the Year” for four years consecutively and was subsequently nominated again last year.
The panelists also know many of these pornstars from close quarters, and it is easy to see who is on top. “If a girl is just everywhere and everything she does is incredible, that’s who rises to the top of the voters’ collective consensus,” Warren added. While the Oscars celebrate art and artiste, the AVN celebrates sex and everything that comes with it. According to Warren, ‘if a movie has a cast of incredible girls across the board, that’s going to win out over just about every other element.’
How was it like in the ceremony?
Attending the awards ceremony was not a cheap affair. However, those who managed to pay the hundreds of dollars to attend the world’s biggest porn convention and awards ceremony were treated to everything that is superhuman about pornstars. With many people now making their amateur content, you can be assured there was no shortage of beautiful, semi-clothed models of all shapes, styles, and sizes.
Many leading names in the industry were in attendance (apart from of course Ron Jeremy, as you may recall, was banned), they were outnumbered by scores of up-and-coming models who primarily built their businesses using cam shows, original clip stores, and monetized social-media platforms. These are artists who have been able to establish a maintainable business, producing their own content and marketing it to a minor but loyal fan base.
The show itself was as raunchy as you would expect. It was co-hosted by comedian Aries Spears, Australian performer/director Angela White and camgirl Harli Lotts. White set a record by winning 14 awards, the most AVN wins in one night, including Female Performer of the Year.
Music performance
The star of the show was hip-hop artiste, Lil Wayne. He was the scheduled headlining performer for the 2018 AVN Awards, and his set ended with roughly 40 adult actresses joining him onstage for “Pop That.”
The 16-minute performance included hits like “I’m Going In,” “Got Money,” “John,” “6 Foot 7 Foot” and a handful of other hits. The highlight was when almost 40 scantily clad pornstars joined him on stage, and he could be heard saying, “I need some help,” as the ‘love’ almost suffocated him. “Thank you! Thank you, oh my God!” Wayne said as he admired the women around him.
PornDude’s final words
That’s how the biggest awards show in the adult entertainment industry went down. This year’s version did not disappoint, with a mouthwatering display of boobs and everything that’s good about female pornstars. You better start preparing a few hundred dollars if you want to be the one telling the story next year.
