Which means that if your neighbor decides to rent out his house for the filming of "The Alphabet" -- in which sexual acts are performed in alphabetical order by 21-year-old identical twins -- there's not much you can do to stop him.

Many in L.A. have endured film shoots in their neighborhoods and know about traffic congestion and sidewalks swarming with production crews. But along with the hassle often comes a little cachet -- if you lived in a dump, chances are they wouldn't be shooting a romantic comedy or a luxury-car commercial next door.

When the call sheet calls for orgiastic sex, cachet isn't what the neighbors talk about. Morality, their children's safety, property values are the topics on many people's minds.

The tale of the Hayvenhurst cul-de-sac, where several adult productions have been shooting almost nonstop for two weeks, pulls back the curtain on how one of the region's most thriving industries -- pornography -- coexists with the city.

A week before Easter Sunday, neighborhood residents received a flyer notifying them that there would be filming down the street in the coming days. Johnson, who works at home as an advertising consultant, said he didn't think much of it.

But soon after the crews started arriving two weeks ago, Johnson's wife called the number on the flyer to find out more about the company. She was told it was Califa Productions, which shoots films for Vivid Entertainment Group, one of the world's largest purveyors of hard-core porn.

The next day, after Johnson barraged city officials with e-mail and phone calls, he was told the production was legal: Califa had been issued the proper permit.

"As far as content, we don't have any authority to go in and do anything unless there's an impact on the neighborhood," said Steve MacDonald, president of Film L.A., the city agency that authorized almost 55,000 individual days of shooting in 2005 -- with fewer than 3,000 of those, he said, devoted to porn. (City officials believe many porn films don't obtain the required permits.)

MacDonald and his staff said that because of the free-speech provision of the First Amendment, they do not discriminate against adult film producers as long as they abide by the conditions of their permit.

Permits for porn films are the same as for any other shoot in terms of parking and street activity, but different in that interiors and exteriors must not be audible or visible to the public.

The Hayvenhurst residents say they're all for creative freedom. The neighbors concede they didn't actually see any nudity or obscene activity, but the mere idea that it was going on bothered them. To all but those getting paid $1,750 a day by Califa Productions, what was happening on the street at holiday time just didn't seem right.

"I was stunned that whoever issues permits for this would be that insensitive," Johnson said. "If they had been shooting a 'West Wing' episode that day, I wouldn't have had the same reaction."

As it turned out, Easter was just the beginning.

Not 24 hours after the Califa trucks drove off, a new crew arrived. This time it was Playboy Entertainment Group, working on a reality television show. The Playboy shoot went through the end of the week, with dozens of trucks entering and exiting the cul-de-sac.

Last Monday yet another company arrived, PW Productions -- to shoot explicit DVD and video cover art for a series of porn films.

Residents circulated a petition that alleged the filming has "introduced unsavory and undesirable elements" into their neighborhood. Twenty-two residents signed.

Regulations require certification of ownership to rent out a home as a film location. According to property records, the house -- a 15-year-old, four-bedroom, five-bath, 5,000-square-foot, stone-and-brick traditional -- sold last year for $1.65 million to Hamid Banafsheha.

When reached by phone, Banafsheha -- a 40-year-old electric supply warehouse owner -- said he had just found out about the filming from neighbors. Banafsheha said he had rented the home to a couple with two infant daughters.

"I'm sorry for all the neighbors," he said, adding that he had told his tenants to cease and desist.

A woman who answered the phone at the film site last week and identified herself as tenant Odelia Bustenay did offer a response to the neighbors' concerns before hanging up.

"Everything we do here is legal," she said. "We got permits for everything. If they are upset then they are nosy."

Steven Hirsch, the co-founder of Vivid, which distributes 60 films a year, said adult productions make some people uneasy. That makes Vivid crews more careful.

"We are cognizant that the neighbors are around when we shoot," he said. "We are quiet, and we don't bring a lot of equipment. There aren't people running around naked, and you can't look through the fence in the backyard and see what we are doing."

Hirsch added that the reason this particular house has attracted so many productions is that it's cheap. Many houses charge upward of $5,000 per day, or almost three times what Banafsheha's tenants were getting.

Brooke, 22, a tall, skinny blonde who got rid of her last name long ago, costarred alongside the twins -- Lacey and Lyndsey Love -- in Vivid's "The Alphabet" and doesn't understand why residents got so worked up.

"I'm a human being, and I don't see what the big deal is," she said. "The person in the next house should get a life, because we're shooting inside and it doesn't harm them. It was just a normal day. I did what I had to do and went home and had dinner with my family."

Meanwhile, Film L.A. staffers said that in the wake of the petition, they have flagged the home as overused, with too many productions shot there in too short a time. They do not plan to issue any more permits for the time being.

Larry Flynt Productions, due to shoot at the house, has canceled. The neighborhood opposition, the company told the city, had ruined the mood.

Also ...

Alternative Porn in Los Angeles

Los Angeles Times, 12/11/05 - A young couple strolls into a cafe in Eagle Rock. Based on appearances—severely angled bird's-nest hairdos dyed in shades of bruise, emblematic tattoos that simultaneously advertise solidarity and defiance, pierced nostrils, lips, eyebrows, faces full of metal—they are the current flavor of hip.

"I'm making movies for her and her boyfriend," says Eon McKai, eyeing the pair as he sips an iced coffee at a sidewalk table. He too is young, 26, and apparently hip in retro glasses and a T-shirt bearing small red letters that spell out "sorrow."

McKai (yes, he took his working name from straight-edge punk pioneer Ian MacKaye; more on that later) is a filmmaker. A young, cutting-edge filmmaker with four movies to his credit and another in production. Though still existing in a niche within a niche, his work has a devoted and growing following, and was acknowledged in a feature in the New York Times. He's passionate about his craft and admires the outsiders, citing influences such as Todd Solondz, Richard Linklater and John Waters; he rails against the predictability of the mainstream.

But McKai isn't birthing no-budget, haunting works on teen angst or earnest documentaries about diseased fish; he doesn't produce heart-rending treatments on the human condition or fast-cut barrages of très-hip action.

He makes pornography. Specifically, alt-porn, triple-X fare for the alt-18-to-30 crowd, starring immaculately codified alt-people. That is, those slightly above and below legal drinking age who favor tattoos and piercings. McKai's films are the I-want-mine alternative to the traditional porn churned out in Chatsworth ("Porn Valley" to those in the business), which is to the multibillion-dollar adult industry what Detroit once was to automobiles.

Of course, it had to happen. Be it clothes, music, television or disposable razors (dig the new Schick Quattro ads in Rolling Stone—four blades of shaving power!), when you slap "alt" on a product, it sells. Now discerning hipsters have their very own brand of porn, made by one of their own.

Cynical smut fans may sniff at the idea. After all, sex is sex, whether the participants are covered with modern-primitive body accouterments or just plain old skin.

McKai is having none of it. He sees a massive stylistic, even spiritual, difference between the standard Porn Valley releases and what he creates. "It's coming from a different voice," he says. "Everything I do when I'm doing my stuff, I try and put my voice in there as much as possible so people know someone like them is making porn now. Somebody you would hang out with, who goes to the same shows as you do, who likes the same music as you do, is now making an adult movie. And that, I think, is the attraction."

There are a couple of other differences too:

"Fake breasts." He views physical integrity the way soda enthusiasts viewed original Coke. "I just always had a strong feeling about the fake breast thing," McKai says. "I wanted to shoot a natural breast and see if we could actually make money."

Then there's the location issue. "I'm trying not to shoot in the Valley. I think the soul of the city of Los Angeles is in the east—I totally feel that with all my heart," he says. His films "Art School Sluts," "Kill Girl Kill" (Parts 1, 2 and 3) and current production "Neu Wave Hookers"—an update of the triple-X series begun in the '80s by legendary porn auteurs the Dark Brothers—were shot mainly on small sound stages in the warehouse district near Santa Fe Avenue.

"There's some [mainstream] porn that's shot downtown," McKai acknowledges, "but we're usually shooting at places where people will come in and be like, 'Hey, two weeks ago I was at a party here. I drank beer here, and now we're shooting.' I shot at the Jensen building on Sunset, I shot 'Art School Sluts' on 7th Street, 'Kill Girl 3' was shot where Don Bolles from [the infamous L.A. punk band] the Germs was living."

And what exactly is he shooting? McKai's postmodern porn stars mock traditionally clunky porn dialogue, sometimes simply holding scripts and reading from them. He includes flubbed takes and casts his friends as clothed extras. "I try to have a little Warhol approach," McKai explains. "Here's the people and here's the script, and I'm just going to let this play out. I'm going to keep the cameras rolling until everyone becomes really uncomfortable, and those are the moments I'm going to cut in."

He hires local fringe talent as costumers and art directors, among them wheat-paste poster artist Buff Monster and documentary filmmaker Margie Schnibbe. His soundtracks feature IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) bands such as Terminal 11, Gang Lu, Libythth and 104. He mixes film textures. Grainy, not grainy. Color, black-and-white. Lighting that swings from stark to shadows. He cuts away to faked TV-screen footage of iconic imagery such as people destroying television sets and stamping on pocket calculators. Dorothy's ruby slippers make an appearance.

It may sound trite to geezers, but apparently it works. According to Hustler/VCA, the company McKai works for, his alt features sell competitively with its more mainstream adult releases.

"It's like MTV or alternative filmmaking rather than straight TV or straight features," says director/producer Jim Malibu, a 30-year adult industry veteran whom McKai considers an invaluable mentor. "He's taking a story and jumping around. It's like experimental filmmakers in art school, but he's doing it with sex. It'll have its own little niche, depending on who's going to view it. Eon's a real creative young guy, and he's added a new spirit to the business. He's added a positive spirit."

This page contains copyrighted material and is made available to better understand pornography, e.g., its effect on society. It is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in receiving the information for research and educational purposes.