The three-day sextravaganza that is Erotica LA is attracting thousands of fans, porn hounds understandably anxious to see their favorite XXX stars in the flesh. It’s yet another facet of show business, but most of the faithful are here to concentrate on the “show” half of that equation. The following is a look at what the folks behind the onscreen action are up to. It’s a sample of what’s new, what’s hot, what’s selling now and what the Next Thing will be from the companies (from films to toys to publications) that feed the needs of the discriminating porn consumer.
Rick Plank, president of Phallix: Business is great, and this is the best LA Erotica show that we’ve ever had. I thin it’s a culmination of the fact that this is the third or fourth year that we’ve done it, and our product line has expanded a lot in those years, and we’ve been lucky enough to start working with Vivid as well, so we have an entire Vivid series. Between that and Playboy TV and a good relationship with AVN, we’ve really gained some serious ground. We’ve opened up a store down on Melrose too, so finally there’s a place where there’s every Phallix piece you can imagine. That’s well over a thousand. About every eight weeks we develop another 12 pieces. Competition is aggressive, which keeps us doing as many progressive, unique things as possible.
Randy West of Randy West Productions: I’m phasing out, I’m on the tail end, putting out mostly comps, good comps, and occasional new releases. Basically, just kind of phasing out. From here on in, I would like to go around the world and play all the best golf courses in the world. I’d like to wind up in Hawaii eventually. It’s someplace warm where the water’s also warm, as opposed to LA where the water’s fucking freezing, as opposed to Miami where the water’s too warm and there’s hurricanes.
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: I have my Website, which is Nickixxx.com, and my studio, which we rent out to other companies. I’ve got Xotic Entertainment, my production company, we’re starting to produce our own movies. So there’s big stuff happening; starting to create a name for myself. I do sing too, you can check that out in Neopornographia 2. I’m loving the convention, I’m running around trying to say hi to everybody, as well as trying to maintain my own booth. I mean, you can walk about five feet in 10 minutes and still not get anywhere.
Jay Grdina, president of Club Jenna, Inc.: We’ve got a lot of new and exciting things. We’re a multi-faceted company, and we’re really expanding right now. We’ve signed five contract girls, and I think we’ve got the best looking girls in the industry, and by far the best sexual performers. When our girls come on set they do the job; it’s not just two positions. For example, I had McKenzie Lee in a three-way with two guys. She’s was like, ‘Can I get some more guys? How about six?’ I said, I don’t know, I might have to pay you less…’ She came to me yesterday and said, ‘for my next scene, can I do 10?’ For a contract performer, that’s almost impossible to find, and every one of our girls is the same. They’re great spokesmodels, and they’re a lot of fun.
We’ve been doing really well with our Website; we’re expanding that market, putting a lot more proprietary content up on line which I think is really essential. Our merchandise is really out of control; we have some really good licensing deals coming down the pipe, and some new games coming out. Our wireless facet of the company is exponentially growing every month. I think we’re up in 12 or 20 carriers with another 10 or 15 pending. We’re looking to branch out and do our own broadcast channel; we’re producing 40 movies a year. We’ve drastically ramped up our output.
Craig Daze, production manager of Darkside Entertainment: We’re pretty much sticking to the same things, we’ve got DJ Yella directing his line, and Byron Long doing his thing now. We’re still baiting Marcus, but he’s Marcus. He runs around and does his thing. Byron’s new line is called Supersize, which is an interracial big-girl line. DJ Yella’s is called Straight Out of Compton.
Jack Spade, Pink TV casting assistant: One thing we’re working on that’s really cool is this: you get your adult movie, you put in the DVD, and at the end of each scene, you can click a button and have the option to see that girl live, because it’ll work through the internet. So you click on it, and if the girl’s available, you can see her, or schedule an appointment.
Francisco Guerra, director of production and technology with Danni’s Hard Drive: We’ve just launched our own pay-per-view channel, Akimbo. We’re also going to start doing some SMS, where people can pay by wireless phones, and our video line is expanding, we have a lot of new titles distributed by Pure Play. And we’re doing more shows like this one, which is very good. Lots of people are coming by, we’ve got lots of beautiful girls here, Aria, Justine Joli, Sarah Blake.
Joe Friday, Friday Productions co-owner: We’ve been really surprised and overwhelmed with the kind of turn out we’re getting. We’ve had a constant crowd since it opened. We just switched distributors to Dane Productions, they’re going to handle our retail distribution, but we’re keeping our label so it stays unique to our company. Their sales guy is amazing. We’ve got four new, great titles I just got back from Brazil where I shot Latin Booty Fetish, which will be out in the next three to four weeks. Every scene is anal, we got a couple DP scenes, it’s a hot movie. It was great working down there, the girls are great, they love sex, they’re energetic, they’re into it, they’re not in it for the money. As soon as a scene is over, they want to go get drinks and fuck more. It’s amazing, and everybody’s tested. I’ve got a feature, Corrupted, it’ll be out by the end of June. Jack Lawrence and I are ex-cops, so we’re bringing our experiences to life on film. It’s got a Training Day and The Shield thing to it, and there’s some great sex scenes. We’ve got Jenaveve Jolie, and Reina Leone, and Annie Cruz, who did a five-guy gang bang.
Lewis Adams, vice president of sales for Damaged Productions: We’ve signed John T. Bone to continue our Taboo line, we did extremely well with the first one, the second will have two different sets of identical twins. We’re continuing to exploit our ethnic lines with our Asian and our Latin lines. We have Latin Lolitas coming out the 29th of June. Asian Desires came out this week and is doing phenomenal. We have a great director that shoots on location in Japan and a great one in Brazil, and we’re just standing by the quality we started with, which is you put a lot of money in and make a good product and sell it at a reasonable price and your customers will support you. At the show here, we created a sampler disc with our trailers, and we’re trying to get it into as many hands as possible, given the saturated market we’re in and the fact that we’re a new company. The product speaks for itself, it’s just getting the name recognition. This weekend is a great way to reach right to the customers.
Zik Ukaeje, publisher of Bodacious Magazine: It’s a new magazine devoted to women of size, it’s the first of its kind anywhere. It portrays larger women in a more positive light. We’re coming out in a big way, and we’re going to shake things up. The models are just so bodacious in every way, I’m happy to be working with all of them. The first issue hits the newsstands July 5th.
Bryce T., general manager of Oriental Dream Pictures: We’ve got eight releases a month now, we’re creating some HD productions, and doing a lot of scenes overseas with our models in Japan. There are a lot of new models and new faces; you’re going to be seeing a lot of new, exciting products from Oriental Dream.
Erotica LA at the Los Angeles Convention Center concludes today from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
