'Hot Girls Wanted' On Netflix: Documentary Looks Into The Darker Corners Of 'Pro Amateur' Porn

Young flesh is porn agent Riley’s renewable resource. “Every day a new girl turns 18, and every day, a new girl wants to do porn. I will never run out,” says the 23-year-old Tampa, Florida-based agent of Hussie Models, in the documentary “Hot Girls Wanted.” Produced by Rashida Jones and directed by Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, the documentary, which debuted May 29 on Netflix, looks into the growing popularity of “pro-am” or pro-amateur pornography.

"In the Internet age, porn stars playing 'the girl next door' are being replaced by the real thing," reads one intertitle.

"Hot Girls Wanted," which premiered at Sundance 2015, could make even the most sex-positive, feminist pro-porn advocate pause for a moment and contemplate the exploitation that exists within the porn industry as it mines small towns for 18- to 20-year-olds who seek Kim Kardashian-style fame and fortune.

Named after the sort of attention-grabbing ad titles that porn agents place on Craigslist to entice young women, "Hot Girls Wanted" makes it clear that showing the dark corners of an exploitative porn industry is on its agenda. And although they are, in fact, at least 18, Bauer and Gradus choose to call them, as the porn industry does, "girls."

Tressa, 19, and Rachel, 18, see Riley's ads as a quick ticket out of their small towns. Tressa admits that she wasn't entirely sure what ad she was answering, when she sent in pictures for a "TV Shows and Radio Jobs" ad on Craigslist. "It didn't hit me until I got on the plane," she says.

"We're going to be rich and famous!" Tressa says to Rachel, who in a different segment also explains that money is what lured her away from Oswego, Illinois. “Are you kidding me? I made $900 in five hours. I’m going to go home and make $8.25 an hour? No. No, no, no, no,” says Rachel, who later seems shocked to discover that, in porn, "They don't care who you really are."

Within months, both Rachel and Tressa become the statistics that one veteran male porn star says is the norm in the industry. The longevity of a newbie, pro-am actress? The majority last about three months. “A lot of them know it’s a trap, but the money’s in their face, right now, cash, and they take it," he says.

One reason the young women don't last long is the fate that awaits many of them, according to the filmmakers. “Major amateur porn companies typically book a new girl 2 or 3 times," reads a film intertitle. "Unless she is a breakout success, she will have to accept more niche-oriented jobs in order to keep working.”

What they mean by "niche-oriented" is porn that includes violence and humiliation, such as BDSM porn or "facial abuse" porn, which involves what is staged to look like forced oral sex preceded by verbal abuse. A clip shown in "Hot Girls Wanted" culminates in the actress subjected to it vomiting and being forced to lap the vomit back up.

A Kinsey research report indicates that about 40 percent of Internet porn depicts violence against women.

Contrasting the confusion and sadness of the young women whose brief careers in porn send them packing back to their small towns are news segments with breakout porn stars such as Duke University student Belle Knox, who one jaded porn star, 23-year-old Ava Kelly, says has a great PR person.

Although Mike Hale of the New York Times describes the tone of "Hot Girls Wanted" as vacillating "between weary outrage and motherly concern," it's not hard to see why. Even the amateur porn success stories seem to have a hidden dark side.

As Riley and his "hussies" watch Knox tell a reporter that having sex on camera is "sexually freeing," Riley says, "she did facial abuse porn -- her first scene." Ava Kelly, whose "facial abuse" scene we see and is easily the most disturbing scene of the documentary, says cynically, “That’s extra degrading. That’s not pretty-girl porn.”

She continues: "She wants to get notoriety but not be scarred. Not everybody can come back from that. I can tell by the way that she talks about it -- she doesn’t talk about it -- that she was one of the girls who didn’t know what she was getting into.”