Earthquake

California's $3-billion-a-year pornographic movie industry is viewing the earthquake as God's personal destruction of American's most wicked city, some porn producers say.

quake was centered in the cities of Northridge, Shatsworth, and Canoga Park, which are home to nearly all of the U.S. soft-and hard-port video industry. Every one of the primary porn studies and distributors, a total of around 70, suffered damage. The headquarters of the largest, VCA Pictures, collapsed, destroying equipment and mast copies of several films. At least for the moment, high-level porn studio executives and models are edgy.

An executive at World Modeling, a San Fernando Valley agency supplying actors to the porn industry, says clients are backing away from X-rated acting as a result of the cataclysm.

"Our clients have a definite lack of motivation," says the agent for porn actors, who requested anonymity. "It's put the fear of God in them. I'm telling you, it's enough to give you an attack of religion."

"Can you imagine how the fundamentalists are going to leap on this when the smoke clears?" says a porn film director who works for many Northridge studios and asked not to be identified. "They'll say it's God's retribution."

"It seems as though the earthquake forced these people to get honest," says Jack Hayford, pastor of Church on the Way in Van Nuys. "It has stirred many to the deepest points of introspection, and if just one of them is turned away from the filth they're involved in, it is a major victory."

Hayford, along with Hollywood Presbyterian Church pastor Lloyd Ogilvie, and Los Angeles Archdiocese Cardinal Roger Mahony has sent a letter of protest against the Valley-based porn industry to the California legislature, asking lawmakers to draft a bill eliminating its most notorious offshoot, child pornography.