If all goes according to plan, an otherwise stately federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles will be converted into a makeshift movie theater this week, screening a series of graphic -- many would say vulgar -- sexual fetish videos.
At issue is how a jury will define obscenity in a region that boasts its status as the capital of the pornography industry and at a time when technology has made the taboo adult flicks of a generation ago available to a mainstream audience.
Hollywood filmmaker Ira Isaacs says the videos he sells are works of art, protected under the Constitution. Federal prosecutors contend they are criminally obscene.
The prosecution is the first in Southern California by a U.S. Department of Justice task force formed in 2005 after Christian conservative groups appealed to the Bush administration to crack down on smut.
For jurors to determine whether Isaacs' work is obscene, they will view hours of hard-core pornography so degrading that in one film, an actress cries throughout, prosecutors said in court papers.
But if jurors find that any of the four videos at issue in the case have any "literary, scientific or artistic value," the work is not legally obscene, according to a 1973 Supreme Court ruling.
"All they're going to do is turn on a DVD machine and hope the jury is going to be so shocked and disgusted and offended that they're going to throw me in prison," said Isaacs, 57, a native of the Bronx. He said he hopes that jurors will be shocked -- he's a self-described "shock artist" -- but also that they will see artistic value in the work.
The portly defendant, who sports a ponytail and goatee, produced and starred in one of the videos. He contends that the sex in the movie is incidental to the art. It's merely a marketing tool to drive sales of the videos on the Internet, he said.
In a statistic that some may find every bit as shocking as his work, Isaacs said he was selling about 1,000 videos per month at $30 apiece before being raided by the FBI early last year. The number has since dropped to between 700 and 800 per month, but they still generate enough money to pay the rent on a house with a pool in the Hollywood Hills.
Isaacs predicted that many jurors would not be able to stomach viewing the movies, some of which feature acts of bestiality and defecation.
"It's going to be a circus," he said of the upcoming trial. "I think I'd freak out if I had to watch six hours of the stuff."
