Hardcore Wishman

This chapter historicizes Wishman’s place within hardcore adult film history as one of the few of a handful of female directors during the golden age of adult cinema. While Wishman disavowed making hardcore films, the author situates Wishman in relation to other softcore directors who disavowed their transition to hardcore, such as Pat Rocco and Herschell Gordon Lewis. The essay situates Wishman’s hardcore filmmaking as divergent from the “porno chic” hardcore that prized narrative and production value to instead focus on delivering the hardcore sequences with only minimal stitching to a narrative trajectory. The author also addresses the question of authorship for these films in a complex way, at once they evince formal techniques found in her softcore films, but they also point to the creative influences of performer Annie Sprinkle on the film’s production.