I didn't know what to expect with "A Life in Dirty Pictures" but what I wound up watching just broke my heart. Joe was soon to leave this world when the documentary highlights his unsuccessful attempt to secure a film he had written due to the lack of a budget necessary to see it get made. Peggy, his long-suffering wife, has endured the ongoing struggle to keep them out of debt and remain at home, all the while hoping his movie will be more than just a pipedream. Sadly, he would be hospitalized and die not long after this doc. The documentary comments on Sarno's disdain for the uptick in the hardcore genre after he, and others like him, tooled their trade in softcore smut, considering their sexploitation work of better quality and value than the explicit and raunchy trash soon to come afterward. Clips from his early work and the last gasp at achieving something substantial (like Confessions of a Young American Housewife (1974)) before that just wasn't enough to thrive during the decade of "Behind the Green Door" and "Deep Throat", "Water Power" and "Forced Entry" are included along with interviews from admirers and insiders of his work. Not focused on is all the smut he directed in the 80s. He even had a film in 2004. However, he doesn't appear as some perverted, creepy elderly dog, but just an old sweetheart who is associated with a genre that deals with sex (he preferred focusing on women in his old exploitation days in the 60s and early 70s) in a number of ways not necessarily considered by moral society as appropriate or respected. Peggy's noble efforts to keep him afloat are shown as is Joe's desire to make one last film. Although shot in New York City, this was a Swedish documentary.
