'LA Weekly' Talks Indie Porn With Joanna Angel, Small Hands

LOS ANGELES—An new extended feature by LA Weekly delves into the challenges faced by BurningAngel co-founder Joanna Angel and husband Aaron Thompson (aka Small Hands) in running what it terms a "DIY porn brand" in today's landscape of tube sites and ultra specific metrics-driven content production. Seeking an answer to the question, as presented in the title, of "Why 'the Stepbrother' Is Porn's New 'Pizza Guy,'" the article by Gustavo Turner examines how Angel attempts to meet the demands of the porn consuming public as reported to her by the webmasters at Gamma Entertainment (which now owns BurningAngel.com) while continuing to imbue the content with the signature punk rock, irreverent style upon which BA was built. The most popular genres among those who pay for their porn, the article reports, include the taboo relations fare referred to in the headline, interracial and MILF. Or as Thompson describes it, "A lot of Trump, middle-America stuff." Perhaps most eye-openingly, the piece goes on to say, "It's as if young, more liberal porn consumers, including many women who watch porn, are not paying for it, and are leaving the choosing of what gets produced to an older, male, more conservative, possibly red-state crowd, who are paying customers." Concedes Angel, "If all it takes is to say 'stepsister' at the beginning [of a scene], I'm gonna do it even if it's silly. I can make a regular porno and just say stepsomething. I make it deliberately hokey: like My Stepsister and I Share Cock." Read the full article here or look for it in the new issue of LA Weekly, hitting the street Thursday. Photo of Joanna Angel and Small Hands by Gustavo Turner.