LOS ANGELES—Michael Warner, a founding member of the Free Speech Coalition and owner of Great Western Litho, one of the primary box cover and packaging printers for the adult industry, has died after having contracted COVID-19.
According to information provided to AVN, Warner contracted the coronavirus around Christmas while he was visiting Palm Springs, and as his symptoms continued to worsen, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital where he was under treatment until his death early today. He was 68 years old when he passed.
Warner's family released this statement:
"To Michael’s Friends Whom He Loved Very Much... As everyone knows, for the past few weeks, Michael has been battling COVID. It is with great sadness that we must share heartbreaking news. Early this morning, due to the effects of the virus, Michael passed away. Michael was one-of-a-kind and the center of our universe. He had a huge heart, cared deeply for his family, friends and colleagues and, through his love and generosity, enriched the lives of so many. This is an unimaginable loss for everyone close to him and it occurs at a time when Michael’s best qualities—kindness, empathy and compassion—are needed most. There is no better way to honor Michael’s legacy than for each of us to embody those qualities and care for each other during this difficult time."
Warner was well-known to nearly all studio heads and adult novelty manufacturers from the early days of the adult industry, and it's said that there wasn't a product or VHS or DVD cover that was printed for this industry that Great Western didn't print.
Several who AVN contacted today at post time were too upset at the news to provide comments right away.
"People say this all the time: Michael was the absolute best guy; he was just the best in every way," recalled AVN founder Paul Fishbein. "The biggest heart, helped everybody, was really in many ways the center of the industry. He was friendly with everybody; he put people together and kept people together. He was a good friend to a lot of people, and in the early days of AVN he was a big help. And I stayed friendly with him throughout the years, and you're going to hear all these stories from all these people about what a good human being he was; he truly was that.
"My heart goes out to his family: Sally his wife, Jeremy his son and Melissa his daughter, and his grandchildren. This is huge. We lost Eddie Wedelstedt; we said he was larger than life, but in a different way, Michael too was larger than life. He was a supporter of everybody in the industry. He was one of the early founders of the industry."
Warner served for more than 10 years on the Board of the Free Speech Coalition, and was one of its founders, back when it was known as the Free Speech Legal Defense Fund. But in the late 1990s, he and several other Board members including Vivid Entertainment co-chairman Steven Hirsch, Wicked Pictures' Steve Orenstein and the late Christian Mann resigned en masse in order to allow for new blood to serve at the Coalition's helm, though some cited family and work commitments for taking their leave. But Warner continued to support the organization for his entire career, printing flyers and other documents and notices for FSC at no charge whenever requested to do so.
"Michael Warner was a universally respected pillar for the adult industry," attorney and Free Speech Board Chair Jeffrey Douglas told AVN in a statement. "Although adult content was only a small part of his publishing business, Michael consistently provided generosity, leadership and wisdom to the rest of the industry. In 1990, the Bush Administration tried to destroy everything he had built, based upon him producing pennies worth of video box covers. Michael Warner stood upright, unbowed. The Government failed in its forfeiture efforts, but yet imprisoned him as part of an FBI sting operation that targeted several company heads. He provided all forms of support for other defendants in the anti-pornography hysteria-based prosecutions. He was a pleasure to work with during his years on the Free Speech Coalition Board of Directors. He was a man of caustic humor, enormous strength and gentleness."
Warner generally adopted a low-key attitude regarding industry politics, though he often contributed monetarily to industry members who faced prosecution, and he attended nearly all industry and FSC events and received several industry awards, including its Industry Founder Award.
Great Western Litho made the news, however, back in 2003 when a massive fire swept through its factory, causing more than $1 million in damages, destroying one of the company's three printing presses and leaving one employee severely burned. Warner told the media that, "We are deeply saddened by the accident, but our commitment to serving our customers remains as strong as ever."
UPDATE: Chad Braverman, COO of Doc Johnson, had known Warner practically since Braverman was an infant, and he spoke to AVN of his memories of his long-time friend and mentor:
"From what I'm hearing, everybody who knew him is just in shock," Braverman told AVN. "Mike was my dad's best friend, and he's pretty much known me since the day I was born, and for me, he was just like a second father. We all called him 'Uncle Michael,' but for me, I always felt like he was more than that. He was someone who I could really go to for a lot of different things in my life, and he brought a different perspective to some of the stuff that I wanted to talk about than my family does, my mom and my dad. I don't think it was until I was older that I realized I really wasn't alone, that my story wasn't unique. That's who he was for so many people.
"Yesterday was a very important loss to a lot of people. He was everybody's first call for so many different things, and he touched so many people in different ways. For him to be my dad's best friend and for me to grow up and now be 38 and to consider him a friend as well and not just an authoritative figure speaks to who he was as a person and how he treated you. For me, my perspective, some of my memories of Michael are always going to be deep; numerous family functions that we spent together. Growing up, we spent almost every Thanksgiving together down in Palm Springs with his family and my family and just getting together. I remember the Thanksgivings grew from ten family members to 20 to 30 with friends and family, and we would have these huge long tables and the memories that I hold very dear when I think about him and all the time I spent with him."
Braverman also recalled Warner's generosity with adult industry members: "I've heard the stories and I've heard my dad talk about it a lot. Listen, Mike was a titan of this industry and a pioneer in this industry, and what's always been interesting to me about him is that in a lot of senses, he wasn't actually in this industry; he did print work and had his hands in different things, but for someone that you could almost consider to be in a different industry, the way that he fought for the adult industry and the way that he fought for protection for people—him and my dad, they always said something to me, which was just, 'If you don't fight for the little people, they're gonna come for the bigger ones someday.' So he always felt it very important to protect everybody in this industry, big or small. He didn't just say it; he actually was an example through action time and time again, from being one of the founding members of the Free Speech Coalition to many other things that he did throughout the years to help this industry and to fight for this industry in so many different ways.
"I believe his father, Joel Warner, was the namesake of the Good Guy Award, and that was another thing for me with Michael on a personal level; one of the things I loved about him and went to him for sometimes was, this industry is really kind of only one generation old and it's starting to come into its second generation, but I felt, as one of the only or first members of the second generation to come in to start working in their family business, to work with their father, and some of the joys of that and some of the difficulties of that, and Michael—I didn't know this until I grew up a little bit, that Michael had gone to work for his dad, and took the business over from his father Joel, and he was a mentor to me in those type of ways, very influential and someone I could always go to that had firsthand experience about what that was like, and it's a unique thing. Not everybody gets involved in family businesses and they have some really unique challenges that come along with that, and having Michael there for me as I was coming up in the business, it's hard to put into words how much he helped me and how much he guided me in that very specific way, and it felt almost like a kinship that him and I had.
"All I can say is, it's as big of a loss as you can have in terms of amount of people who I think are simultaneously feeling this way."
