AVN.COM BUSINESS PROFILE - Maximum Grind: Grinding It Out, Taking It to the Big Boys

Jeff Krull, former vice president and head of production at Jill Kelly Productions, has been in the adult business for a quarter of a century and kicked off Maximum Grind last July.

In 2005, the company changed its focus from distributing other companies’ product to only Maximum Grind titles.

“We’re partners with Exotic Studios, so everything that’s done through Exotic will be distributed by Maximum Grind,” President Jeff Krull told AVN. “We aren’t distributing anyone else’s stuff. We have 470 scenes that we shot last year, we spent over $500,000 on content last year and we haven’t used any of it. We’re way ahead of the game in that sense. I just got caught up distributing other people’s stuff, and spent too much money on them and not enough on us. Last year we spent $367,000 paying royalties to other studios on stuff we distributed. If we replace every title this year with our titles in the release schedule, then we’ll make over $600,000.”

Maximum Grind recently signed on with BXI for Canadian distribution, Shots Video to do European distribution and all the Blockbuster locations in South America through Alcione in Florida.

“They only picked up three studios,” Krull said of Alcione. “Jill Kelly, [Club] Jenna and Maximum Grind.”

“The whole focus of what we’re doing is, we’re trying to compete with the big boys,” Krull said, “Zero Tolerance, Red Light District, but instead of just gonzo movies, we’re very genre-oriented. If you look at the Maximum Grind stuff right now, we’ve got your foreign stuff with foreign talent. You’ve got your foot fetish stuff, Latin stuff and we’ve got Trisha Uptown.”

Uptown, who was a favorite in nudie magazines for several years and performs exclusively with girls, only decided to do video last year and is working exclusively for Maximum Grind. Trisha’s Bitches has been the company’s best-selling title, and volume two recently arrived on shelves.

“We’re also doing a line called Trisha Fucks the World,” Krull said. “One will be all-black, one will be all-Latin, with Trisha taking on seven or so girls in each.”

The company also has inked a five-picture deal with Nikki Hunter, and former San Francisco police officer Joe Friday signed an exclusive contract to make 10 movies for the company, including Oral Junkies, Group Therapy and Cocks: Life in the Sheets.

“Friday will be going on a national tour, radio and TV, all that,” Krull said, “and he’ll get the press because he was a cop.”

Friday moved to Porn Valley with now-wife Reina Leone after news that the pair, Friday, a then-San Francisco cop, and Leone, who worked for Sheriff's Department as an institutional cop at San Francisco General Hospital, had appeared together in a 45-minute porn titled Bus Stop Whores. Officials were not amused and the pair have made the most of their move.

“The difference between our product and Red Light or Zero Tolerance is that we’re darker,” Krull said. “We’re more fetish-oriented; we’re trying to be a little edgier.”

Krull also said that the company plans to focus on video-on-demand, “hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be able to open up our own VOD system. I really think in three or four years, if you don’t have a proprietary VOD system in-house, you’re gonna be fucked. We’re really trying to give the customers what they want.””