No less a free enterprise proponent than Bruce Springsteen once wrote the words, “From small things mama, big things one day come.” The Boss could well have been describing Colossal Entertainment, a burgeoning porn concern in existence for only slightly over a year. In that time, however, the company has offered thirty releases, with plans to up their output to eight pictures monthly as of July.
Sheldon Baer is Colossal’s president, and though he entered the adult world as of starting his company, he’s a mainstream veteran of many years. Baer is also president of Chandler Valley Center Studios, of which Colossal is a subsidiary.
“We have soundstages for movies and television we furnish all the equipment,” explains Baer of Chandler Valley. “We’re doing Larry David’s show Curb Your Enthusiasm, and we did Rush Hour 2, among other things. We have contracts with Universal and NBC and places like that. We do a lot of commercials too, all the Ford commercials you see with Brooke Shields, the ipod commercial that’s showing now is ours, we do a lot of major stuff.”
So what brought him into porn?
“My son-in-law was in the adult business. He’d sold his business, and wanted to start another one and asked me to come in,” Baer says. “I wasn’t so sure, but he convinced, me said it was a great business, so I said all right. I’m familiar with the entertainment business. So now I got into it, and he’s entrenched with another company! So I inherited Colossal, and we’re building it and we’re doing a real good job.”
The fledgling outfit recently hired Michael Glaser as director of marketing, another mainstream vet. He ran Michael Glaser and Co., a video and DVD replication business with a client list that included Fortune 500 companies, and will be a key player in Colossal’s expansion. Of course, there can be no growth without decent product to feed from; the company has been turning out top-notch gonzo material, but always with a distinct theme in mind, such as the recent Fuckeroos.
“It’s a western,” reveals Baer, and there are many others in the Colossal canon, some out now, some for imminent release. “Twat Squad is a cop one. We have Capital Punishment, it’s a prisoner movie. Caged Sluts is gals in cages. Drunk on Cum is another one, and it’s just what it says. Dreams Gone Wild, that’s where they’re sitting on a sofa dreaming about what’s going to happen to them and so forth. I Cream On Genie, that’s a great one. That’s where the genie comes out of the bottle. That won the Hustler cover award. Vanilla Cream Pies, I don’t know what the hell that was about. Cum Addicts, that was a really good one where they’re addicted to the stuff. It’s like they’re drug addicts! We have a scene where they can’t wait to get their next fix and so forth. And Cum Swapping and Lollipops, that’s our first European release.”
Colossal is also branching into the lucrative gay market this month with two releases, Real Hard Men and The Wood Game, with content from Brazil that comes via a barter deal.
But, as far as the material Colossal itself generates, Baer is involved “Ninety-nine per cent,” he states. Here’s his formula for creative success: “What we do is the directors come in and we decide what we’re going to do. I have a book with all the movie titles in it—and I’m talking about regular movies—from 1920 on. I look at those titles, and we come up with ideas from those titles. So, we say, let’s do a movie called Capital Punishment. That happened to be a real movie back God knows when. So we said, let’s do a jail scene, for example, then we talk about it for a few hours, then we pick all the talent, then we go scene by scene, and then we go for it.”
It’s all about control, explains the president.
“I now exactly what every scene is going to be before they do it. Then, when the filming is over, I run a copy and say, ‘okay, I like this,’ or, ‘take that out.’” Coming from the sheltered world of mainstream content, Baer has adapted to porn quickly.
“I guess I must just have something,” he chuckles. “I don’t know what it is. I learn fast, that’s all.”
For more information go to www.colossalent.com, or call Michael Glaser at 818.506.4223.
