A porn star is a person in your neighborhood

Pornography is big business: while Amazon.com continues to hemorrhage red ink after four years, the average internet porn site is profitable within six months, and the industry as a whole raked in over a billion dollars last year alone. No longer the domain of the dirty old man in a trench coat, "adult movies" are available at most video outlets, and rented by men, women and couples of every social status. Strangely, these same people are quick to judge the performers - they must be drugged out losers, and ex-hookers whose past is rife with sexual abuse. Life is never that simple.

Adopted at birth, Stacey Baker had a normal upbringing, had never been abused and was an average young woman - pretty, amiable and somewhat lacking in self-esteem. Not exactly a Rhodes scholar, she had a simple goal in life - get married and be a good wife, because that's what's expected of proper girls from Tulsa. Her husband's Madonna/whore fascination would soon change all that. After pressuring her to get breast implants and pose for nude photos, he submitted the pictures to a men's magazine. To both their amazement Stacey was chosen as "Girl Next Door" and "Hustler" magazine swept her off to do a shoot with a male model on the Mexican Riviera. Loving the attention and surprised at her disappearing inhibitions, she had an epiphany - the woman who previously felt she had no talents, realized that she did have one undeniable skill - she could "f*** great". She had discovered her niche.

Stacey soon ditched her overbearing husband, and moved to Los Angeles, adopting the stage name Stacey Valentine. She gives herself two years to become the best in the business and quickly becomes the "it" girl of the porn set. A consummate professional, Stacey is there to get the scene, and nothing - not stinging ants or fake smoke that almost cause her to cough up a lung - is going to get in the way. While she notes cavalierly that "When I'm horny, I go to work, and if I want affection I have my cat…" it is soon apparent that the broad smile pasted on her face is part of her carefully manufactured screen persona.

Although there is ample nudity and several sex scenes (carefully filmed to avoid being explicit), it is the unflinching look at Stacey's life that makes you feel like a voyeur. In her world a relationship is threatened not by sex with strangers but rather something as seemingly innocuous as holding hands with another person. We watch as Stacey, driven by ambition, sabotages her relationship with Julian, a fellow "actor" and nice guy who sincerely cares about her. Midway through the film her chirpy optimism has been replaced by a sad cynicism echoed by her new tattoo - "trust no one". Stacey comes to realize that engaging in sex on command has stripped her of the one thing she needs - intimacy. Unable to find it she concentrates on her career, ultimately winning the H'ot Dor, the Oscar of the adult film industry, and you expect her to give the "You like me, you really like me" speech. Stacey's changes are not limited to the emotional.

In order to maintain the illusion of living Barbie doll Stacey undergoes numerous plastic surgeries, brought to you in living color. No horror movie can hold a candle to the violence of a silicone implant the size of a throw pillow being yarded through a gaping hole in a women's breast, then replaced with another only marginally smaller implant. If this isn't enough to make you squeamish, they also serve up a liposuction and an operation to give Stacey come-hither lips.

Some of the best scenes in the movie come in the exchanges between Stacey and her mother, an amazingly nonjudgmental, supportive woman who lavishes her daughter with unconditional love. Her only worry is that when she is gone, Stacey will spend the rest of her life alone. It is obvious that Stacey had not, until that very moment, contemplated this thought, and both women burst into tears. It is a touching moment that avoids being gooey.

The most remarkable thing about Stacey Valentine that there is nothing remarkable about her - she truly could be anyone's neighbor, daughter or sister. If you have the opportunity to see this film seize it.