"I've not been served yet, but I've heard rumors that there's a Brooke Ashley lawsuit out there and I'm being named," said writer/director Cash Markman. "All I can say is, I was technical director on that [World's Biggest Anal Gangbang] shoot. I had nothing to do with putting it together. I had nothing to do with hiring Brooke. I had nothing to do with hiring Marc Wallice. I had nothing to do with inspecting the paperwork."
Markman says that Dan Beck of Hard Core TV was the "inspiration behind that project."
Markman: "He [Beck] was producing the live show, which was called Xtasy Girls Live. I did about a dozen of those for him. He called me out of the blue - I'd never met him before - and asked me to come in and do the live show, and, toward the end of that experience, Beck said he had this idea to do an anal gonzo gangbang. Beck had just noticed that John T. Bone did a big time gonzo movie like that. Beck thought it would be a new wrinkle. I told him I thought it was bad timing, because a couple of people had just come up HIV positive, and there was a lot of concern in the industry about doing something like that. Beck felt it would make it more controversial and he was more determined to go forward.
"Beck asked me to direct it. I turned it down on a couple of occasions, not just because I thought it was in bad taste, but it's not my forte; it's not something I'm known to do. And he kept pressuring me, implying that if - I was his director on the live show; if I liked that gig, I should come do this as well. It would be an easy job, I was told. It would just be technical directing. We would do it just as we had done the live show - multiple cameras, shooting everything as it happened.
"I agreed to come in and do it on a day, and regretted doing it immediately, because it was just a very negative and bad experience. I didn't think Beck was treating Brooke terribly well. As a matter of fact, at one point, she was crying [because of something she overheard Beck say about her]. I went to try to make her feel better, and tell her not to take anything he said personally; just listen to the way he talks to everybody; you know, he'll have all of us crying before the day's over if we let him.
"And she had asked me to - she told me there was a couple people she didn't want to work with, because she didn't know who they were, so I went to Dan and asked if we could drop them from the show? And Brooke also asked me to request that a few people wear condoms because she didn't know them. Again, I went to Dan and made that request, and he agreed, so those people had to wear condoms. So that was really the extent of my capacity there - just to be a buffer between Brooke and the producer and also to work the technical crew.
"The camera shots were all planned out in advance. Dan wanted to have a couple fluff girls there to keep the guys hard. Then each guy would step up to Brooke and she would do a little oral, work with them, a little vaginal, and then some anal, and there would only be a couple of minutes of each. There were going to be 50 guys. So the guys were going to come in about a half-dozen at a time and be lined up with the fluff girls. That was pretty much all planned out beforehand.
"Brooke knew most of the guys, sure. I mean, most of them were professionals, people you and I know, who've been in the business for quite a while. There were some people there I didn't know, and some people she didn't know. I don't know where they came from. I think they were starting out. I think they all were acquired through the agencies; through World or through PGI, and - but the people she was not familiar with were the people she wanted to wear condoms or to have excused - because she didn't like the looks of the guy or didn't feel comfortable with him. So we made sure that happened. You know, I went to Dan and had a little fight to make sure that she would not have to work with anybody she didn't feel comfortable working with.
"Brooke was not made to work with anybody she didn't want to. I mean, it's very possible - I understand that she did have a contract with Dan, and I never saw it, and I don't know what was in that contract, so it's very possible she may have been gritting her teeth and doing things that she didn't want to, but I wasn't aware of it. Brooke seemed to be of good spirits, through the first part of the day. As it started to drag on, her spirits came down a bit. I know Dan upset her a couple of times, and that's when she came to me and started making recommendations of people that she did not want to work with. But most of the people earlier in the day were the better known performers because the pay wasn't terribly good, and so what we tried to do was arrange it so that anybody who had any marquee value could get in and get out early.
"Robert Dupree was Dan's partner... he wasn't up there for that particular shoot, but he did come up a couple times for the live show. And I met him. He was a very nice man, and seemed to be very frustrated and upset by the way Dan was running the show. He felt, and I agreed, that Dan was very rude to the talent, and seemed to just use people, and Robert was very appalled by all that.
"Dan had talked Robert into getting into the business and investing and putting the money up for these productions, and Dan had connections with Xtasy Channel and was able to put the live show together. He had done a couple of episodes before I came on board, and it wasn't going too well. Houston had given him my name and suggested that maybe I could make it work. I came and did, I believe, the third or the fourth show, and we did about a dozen from that point on.
"My experience with Dan ended right after the anal show. We did one more live program and I just couldn't take it anymore because I think I just felt upset from the whole experience of the way that anal show went down, and Dan seemed to be fighting with his partner; he seemed to be getting out of control, becoming more abusive of the talent, and it just was becoming a very distasteful situation. But Robert was a nice guy. He came from outside of the industry and after having three or four months in it as Dan's partner, he wanted to get out.
"Dupree came up for a couple of the live shows; I think, three times. And toward the end of it, right around the time we did the anal show, he came up - not for the anal show but for one of the live programs - and that's when he and Dan had it out, and got into a fight because he felt that Dan was not listening to me and not listening to any of the professionals and Dan was being abusive of just about everybody, including him, and he was the guy that was putting up the money, and so they came to a decision that they were going to start to wind down the productions. Dan wanted me to continue working with him and I refused because I just didn't like the direction Dan was going and the way he was treating people. And this all happened very quickly; I'd say within a week or two of the Brooke Ashley program.
"Xtasy canceled just to get rid of Dan Beck, you know, and they called me and asked me if I wanted to continue it, and I told them maybe down the road a bit, but I didn't want to at that time. We were all kind of reeling from just the bad experience. You get somebody with a personality like that, and he just upset a lot of people. You may recall the letters that he and I traded in AVN after the whole thing was done."
Markman said he never wrote to the Luke Ford site [lukeford.com]
Markman: "I never did, but I heard about it. I put in a call to Luke because I was surprised when somebody brought my attention to it. Luke knows my phone number. I've granted interviews to Luke in the past and invited him out to the set on a couple of occasions, and suddenly there's this piece on his website where he's quoting Brooke as - things that aren't true.
"For instance, it was saying that this was a K-Beech production; that K-Beech put up the money, which isn't true. K-Beech knew nothing about this production until it was done, and Dan Beck brought it in to them and offered it to them. The other thing Brooke was saying that was untrue was that it was my production. I was there in the capacity of a technical director, and my name wasn't even supposed to go on the finished show. Dan ended up putting my name on the show because he wanted to take it to K-Beech, and he knew I had a relationship there. Dan figured that would help sell it. So, unfortunately, I kind of got the blame for this thing, or the credit, whatever way you want to look at it. It's one of those jobs I regret taking. And there were a few of the crew people who I normally hire, who turned down coming out there too, and I wish I had shown their judgment and turned it down, but we all make mistakes. Mostly, I'm sorry about Brooke's mistake, and hooking up with Dan Beck; that's the real tragedy of it." Markman says he hired the tech crew.
Markman: "Yeah, I brought in all the technical people who worked on the cable show. Dan was really having a bad time of it when I came in, so I brought in some good cameramen... {For the anal show] I hired the crew people. Dan hired all the talent, and it was Dan's idea to hire Marc Wallice. I remember he called me and specifically asked if I knew how to get a hold of Marc Wallice. I told him that he would have to call Jim South. And it was Dan's idea to hire Brooke Ashley. Originally, it was Alyssa Allure, and she dropped out, and then there was somebody else he was talking to - I forget who - and then Dan called me to say, 'I've got Brooke.' And he had her signed to a contract and so forth. So really, her beef is with him, and unfortunately for Robert Dupree, it's with Robert too, because he was Dan's partner, and that's a shame because Robert's a nice guy, and he didn't really know what was going on, but he was in partnership with Dan, and he was approving of the projects and he was putting the money up for the projects."
"Beck and Dupree formed a Nevada corporation, which I suppose will give them a certain amount of protection, and Dan, who's the real culprit here, may be a little hard to track down. He's left town. So I think what Brooke's doing with her attorneys is they're going after anyone they can, so the easy people to go after is K-Beech, because they distributed the video, but they did not put up the money for the production. They were not aware of the production. They had no knowledge of it or anything to do with it till after it was done and edited and delivered to them, and I'd even asked Dan not to take it in there, and he did anyway, and he stuck my name on the front of it.
"I don't understand why Brooke's suing Gourmet. But I'm not an attorney. Yeah, it was shot there - Rob Spallone was only around for ten or twenty minutes. You know, he was there to let us in, and there to say goodnight, so I don't understand how they have liability."
Dan Beck had this to say: "Since I've been sued, and since I've not yet retained an attorney, nor have I been served with papers, I've been advised that the best thing I can say is, 'no comment.' "
