In the first decade of this century, my favorite porn series was Shane’s World. It was one of the first porn series to copy the reality TV show format. Now, I hate reality TV. But I loved Shane’s World. Adult entertainment producers have learned a lot over the years about how to produce scenes that engage viewers better. Take out that “porno” music in the background. It’s funny and it satisfies some idea about what make a film a professional feature but it takes me out of the scene. I want to hear the sounds of the sex. I want to believe I’m there, too. Ideally I want to believe I’m participating in the sex scene.
In the best scenes of the Shane’s World series you think you’ve stumbled upon a private video of hot young people having a great sex party. They laugh and make jokes while having sex. Girls and guys high five each other. They play party games. Select annotated Jenga tiles to see who fucks who and how. They get civilians (students, fire men) to fuck them on camera.
Founded by porn star Shane (Shannon Hewitt), it promised a mix of MTV’s The Real World and gonzo porno. Shane had been dating porn star and director Seymour Butts prior to this. (He was the subject of a 2003 Showtime reality series, “Family Business.”) Shane made news by having sex with a volunteer firefighter at an Elmont, NY fire department in 1994. The next year she broke up with Seymour and began her own series.
The first episodes of Shane’s World were road movies: get a few friends in the van and go to different locations to have fun and fuck. A water park, camping trip, a snow resort. Featuring an MTV-ish reality show title sequence (a rolling keg, grainy black and white footage), these early shows were mainly distinguished by Shane’s sparkling sense of humor and the genuine party atmosphere she was able to give to the group sex scenes. She would give tips on subjects like “giving blowjobs in a car.” (Important to have a scrunchie for your hair!) Many of these early episodes are almost impossible to find now. (Perhaps Shane took them out of circulation when she left the series?)
The last DVD Shane made in the series was 1999’s Shane’s World, Vol. 18: The Roller Coaster of Love. She left porn and married to Bobby Fernandez-Hewitt of the band Orgy. Two of her ex-employees continued the series.
In 2000 the studio released “Shane’s World 22: Scavenger Hunt,” the first of several episodes in which performers were divided into two teams who would compete for points by performing sexual and non-sexual pranks such as being nude in public, giving blow jobs to strangers, swallowing goldfish.
In one scene in “Shane’s World 29: Frat Row Scavenger Hunt 3” (2001), Sunrise Adams reads from a list to interested young men in a parking lot: “We can give you hand jobs, blow jobs. We can fuck you…” And several of these lads take her and porn star Venus up on this invitation in a van parked in that lot. (Try finding the scene now! I suspect one of the participants was able to get it taken down.)
The combination of a scavenger hunt in a college location proved very popular with audiences. In 2003, the “Shane’s World 32: Campus Invasion” DVD received mainstream attention after Indiana University officials balked at having been the location of the episode. A story in Rolling Stone by Ken Hegan called “The New Sex Ed” documented a couple of the shoots.
Starting with an initial top-secret guest list of 400 people, the party planner for Shane’s World, known as Justin Cider, has carefully whittled the crowd down to 150 photogenic students, giving guests the closely guarded address only minutes before the party… Calli is quickly surrounded by a screaming crowd of drunks. She whips out her bullhorn and asks for volunteers to strip down to their underwear. This is the modus operandi for Shane’s World: Loosen up the crowd with silly party games, humble a few guys, then use them as performers. Three come forward. Calli instructs them to strap on diapers and suck on the baby bottles and pacifiers. After a few seconds of highly subjective adjudication, she decides that Hagen, a twenty-one-year-old UCSB film major, makes the best baby of the bunch. His prize: a blow job.
— Rolling Stone [1]Rolling Stone, August 27, 2003, “The New Sex Ed”
Shane’s World models were even featured in the notorious 2003 Abercrombie & Fitch back to school catalog and quarterly. (Highly collectible, I’ve only ever seen the first 100 or so pages but not the “Party With Porn Stars In Your Dorm Room” story that features Calli Cox and others.)
The “College Invasion” series sold even better than the original Shane’s World series and went to 13 episodes, ending in 2012. Founder Shane Hewitt, however, wasn’t pleased with the direction her old studio pursued: “It’s just wrong. College kids are there to do something with their lives. Whatever they do on that video will always be around. Their families are always going to know, and wherever they go and work, it’s only a matter of time until those people find out, too.” [2]ibid
Several porn sites and series have copied the “porn stars having sex with college students” format but none of them have been as hot as Shane’s World and College Invasion at their best.
