Northstar Associates was born when veteran actor Peter North teamed up with entrepreneur Richie Zaye.
North Pole is Peter’s company, Zaye Entertainment is Richie’s; they sell their product to Northstar, which gets it out to the buyers. It’s a one-two punch, and it has moved them right into the winners’ circle with a highly successful first year as a manufacturer-distributor.
Last month, Northstar moved into a spacious new facility (6,000 square feet) on land the two men own in Orange County. All functions, from editing to box cover design, will now be done under one roof.
North and Zaye needed more space. “You’re bound to run out of room at some point,” Zaye said. Especially when your catalogue keeps growing and your numbers keep going up.
The two guys met at a gym in 1991 and became fast friends, then business partners. It was Zaye who convinced North to start his own company and make his own movies. North, Zaye says, had “been working for other people for a long time. I was begging him to do his own stuff as early as 1994. ‘We can kill ’em, with how popular you are,’ I told him.”
North, an AVN and XRCO Hall of Famer, first went into production in 1998 with the series North Pole, still his signature line. Richie started Zaye Entertainment in 2001. Both were distributed by New Sensations.
In October 2003, Zaye decided to “take it a step further” as an independent distributor. The following month, North came on board, and NorthStar Associates took flight.
North says that in his title he is not so much interested in acrobatic or rough sex, the way much of his competition is. “I like to see a girl have an orgasm,” he says, and he’s made that his theme. His most popular line is Deep Throat This!,which he plans to “kick up a bit” this year.
North’s other series include his own First Offense, which concentrates on young new girls. Then there’s Latina Fever, shot in Brazil by Craven Moorehead, with all Brazilian talent, each of them HIV-tested before shooting. It has harder-edged sex than North’s own lines. A strap-on series from Brazil is in the works.
Xtra Large Creampies is North’s big new project for this spring. It will have total title integrity — cream pies as only North can deliver them. The actor has long been celebrated for his spectacular ejaculations, which he says are aided by a supplement called Peter North’s Secret that he markets on a Website of the same name. He says it is drawn from mushrooms that grow on 2,000 year-old trees in Thailand and not only “produces a heavier pop” but also has beneficial side effects, such as curing allergies.
Zaye came into the adult industry from a business background. He was general manager for a large car dealership in Orange County, and also a builder, constructing homes in the OC and Las Vegas.
His first line, the all-girl Pussy Foot’n, is still his mainstay. He added Rectal Rooter a bit later and this year will introduce a tranny line called Hung Like a Whore.
He is most enthused about the deal he made with Europorn legend Sylvia Saint, who he met at the Berlin Venus Fair, to distribute her new line in North America. The first volume is called Fetish Desires; each subsequent release will have a different title.
Zaye recently shot an all-male movie, Damien Ford in Hawaii, with an eye toward getting a deal for the softcore version on one of the upcoming gay cable channels. Shot in Hilo, in picturesque outdoor locations, it is NorthStar’s only gay release.
This month, Zaye will shoot Teanna Kai in her first boy-girl scene — two of them, in fact — in a movie that she will own and NorthStar will distribute. NorthStar has also been distributing the Hi-Def moives of Visage Films.
Zaye, who says he hopes eventually to make mainstream movies, plans to shoot four features in Hi-Def himself this year.
Both North and Zaye make regular shooting trips to Europe, and in April, they’ll be making their first trip to Poland to hook up with a Polish talent agent that Zaye met at the Venus Fair.
NorthStar Associates, 537 Newport Center Drive, Suite 530, Newport Beach, CA 92660. 714.593.8777, 888.263.0777, fax: 714.979.4408. Email: [email protected].