Patrick Collins built Elegant Angel Video into one of the major-brand porn companies of the 1990s. Then he stepped away and watched it flounder. Now he’s back in charge, and they’re once again at the top of their game.
Collins is the first to shoulder blame for the company’s slow but steady decline in the waning years of the last century. “I wasn’t here, I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t really want to be involved,” he said, “and the quality of the Elegant Angel product was mostly inferior, in every aspect.”
But three years ago he took the reins firmly in hand, and everything changed. In 2004, the company, its owner in control, is on a roll. Collins, with two ace directorial cohorts, Thomas Zupko and William H., has returned Elegant Angel to the excitement and creativity of its glory days.
Collins, an AVN and XRCO Hall of Famer, had never intended to direct, much less own. He got into porn 15 years ago — along with his “exhibitionist” wife Tianna — strictly for fun. “To me it was just a way to get more pussy. I had no intention of ever really working in the business other than getting a blowjob or fucking.” He had previously worked in sales positions. “I was at that time in investments,” he said.
John Stagliano, who knew him socially and was aware of his business expertise, asked him to become Evil Angel’s sales manager in 1989. Collins proved to be savvy, tough and innovative in the job.
Elegant Angel was started in 1990 as an Evil Angel subsidiary, with Collins in partnership with Stagliano. Its first five releases were Bruce Seven girl/girl productions. Then Collins got the itch to direct and shot his first movies — Buttwoman in Budapest, Tianna’s Hungarian Connection and Depravity on the Danube —on one jaunt to Hungary.
“After I started having a little bit of success as a director,” he recalled, “John said, ‘Look, we’ll just remain partners on the first productions. You put in all of the money, and you’ll be happier owning Elegant Angel.’
“If I had known the amount of work, I probably never would have tried to do it on my own,” he said with a rueful chuckle. “These guys, all they have to do is direct, they got it made.”
In 1996 Collins seceded from the Evil Empire and set up Elegant Angel as an independent manufacturer. Along with his creative partner, cameraman Michael Cates (still a key player on the Elegant Angel team), he created the edgy vignette series, Sodomania, which soon became its signature line. He went to Brazil to shoot, and back to Hungary.
But he didn’t make many movies. Elegant Angel’s biggest year was 1995, with all of eleven releases. Aware that he’d soon have to choose between staying small or expanding, Collins took the latter route.
He discovered Van Damage shooting amateurs in San Diego and signed him up for Filthy First-Timers, along with his partner, salesman Greg Alves. He gave Tom Byron his first break behind the camera, with the Cumback Pussy line. He signed Rob Black, who directed award-winning films for him, and Nicky Starks, who started the hugely successful black series, Sugar Walls.
In 1997, Black, Byron and Damage quit to go on their own as Extreme Associates. Starks left soon after to form Darkside Entertainment. Alves moved to Metro as general manager and later on founded Zero Tolerance.
And Collins began spending less and less time in the office and more time at home with his second wife and their just-born daughter.
He looks back on that period with regret. “When you’re working on everything yourself, you can maintain the integrity of the product. When you’re not there, you’re setting yourself up for some problems.”
With no firm hand at the helm, he said, “Elegant Angel lost its focus. It was doing more productions, but the productions weren’t good enough, the box covers were haphazard, and I wasn’t really interested.” He felt burnt out as a director and at one point considered retirement.
“I wasn’t here, and I had somebody else running things.” The result was mediocre movies — and worse. “Productions were being bought from people for $5,000 and invoiced to Elegant Angel for $20,000, and then put out with the Elegant Angel name. I wasn’t watchin’ any of that shit,” he said.
Worst of all, there was “a tremendous amount of theft going on. My customers were very unhappy. They’d keep saying, ‘I can buy this for five bucks’ — and I was selling it for quite a bit more. And I’m saying, ‘No, that’s impossible. ’”
He finally figured out that a clandestine backdoor operation was being run right under his nose. “Basically it was an entire distribution company — stuff going out of the warehouse, sleeves being printed, extra DVDs being replicated and delivered to other locations — a real insidious kind of a thing.”
The man who had earned a hard-won reputation for holding firm on his wholesale prices was forced to drop them on his first 580 releases just to discourage the in-house competition.
He was faced with several possible solutions, none easy. He could downsize the company, release one a tape a month and cut up his catalogue for compilations. Or he could sell it outright. Or he could try to fix what was broken and bring Elegant Angel back to its position of eminence.
The latter option was the hardest, but that’s what he picked.
He remembers precisely when he resumed hands-on management: September 17, 2001. “At that time I had a meeting with some auditors, and that changed everything. It was tough, but it was a hell of a challenge. There was an insidious atmosphere among the people that were in the company at the time, and it took a long time to get rid of them, to turn that all around.”
By the beginning of 2004 he felt that the company was on strong enough footing administratively that he could devote more time to directing movies. “It’s a diminishing skill, directing,” he noted. “If you don’t do it for a long time, when you start doing it again, you’re playing a lot of catch-up.”
Rave reviews of his productions this year, including Slutwoman’s Revenge, Lauren Phoenix Iz Buttwoman, Cytherea Iz Squirtwoman, Cum Rain Cum Shine and Tails from the Toilet, indicate that he has not only caught up but surpassed himself.
“Where we’re at right now,” Collins said, “is trying to focus our identity in the marketplace, with consistent design on the box covers, with attempting to make the best DVDs that are available, with tons of extras. We’re spending more money on productions at a time when a lot of people are trying to spend less. And we’re really listening to our customers.”
He has jumped into the European market for the first time with Elegant Angel Europe, represented by Sunset Media, which calls itself “one of the oldest and most reputable German adult distributors.”
Collins said the reason he has sold little in Europe is that “when you start selling DVDs to one country, what stops them from delivering it everywhere? You’ve got to have somebody looking out for your interests, somebody who’s going to make money or lose money depending on whether or not people are pirating. So now we’re going to have European covers, we’ll be able to see if it comes back into this country. We’ll have a control — we had no control before.”
At home, Collins said, sales are up over 200 percent over the last 14 months, adding, “I’m still very protective of my pricing on all my new titles, basically since January of this year.” The full catalog weighs in at 700 releases.
And along with the new-look DVDs came an infusion of new blood behind the camera. Collins guided feature-oriented director Thomas Zupko through a successful transition to gonzo (the Big Wet Asses series) and mentored the work of William H., now the company’s main cameraman as well as a director (Semen Demons, Cum Drenched Tits).
He currently releases four titles a month but will go to more when he finds directors who can fill the slots in the manner to which Elegant Angel’s fans have become re-accustomed.
One sign of success was the company’s move last month to larger quarters in Canoga Park, their third West Valley location in eight years. They have also just launched a revamped company Website, elegantangel.com.
Collins has a simple summation of his company’s 14-year, up and down trajectory: “We were good, then we weren’t, and now we’re better.”
Elegant Angel, 8015 Deering Ave., Canoga Park, CA 91304. 818.704.2673. For sales, contact Ed Kail at 800.495.5594 or [email protected].