| Homegrown Video created the amateur genre in 1982 by duplicating
swinger's tapes and sharing them. The company releases footage from anyone as long as it's
legal. "Lake and his wife, Alyssa, sift through
the new tapes that arrive at their office each week from round the world. The people who
appear in these videos are of every race, size and shape. Their bodies are different from
those seen in typical hard-core films, in which the performers often look like parodies of
the reigning masculine and feminine ideals."
People who send tapes to Homegrown hope to break into the
porn business, or earn a little extra money, or show off. The company pays them $20 for
every minute of video it uses; about half the tapes that Homegrown receives are eventually
released in some form. "In a sense, the company serves as a clearinghouse for the
democracy of porn, supplying hard-core videos by the people, for the people."
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